HH.i/<. 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


750 


THE  POET'S  POET 


THE  POET'S  POET 

ESSAYS  ON  THE  CHARACTER  AND  MISSION  OF 
THE  POET  AS  INTERPRETED  IN  ENGLISH  VERSE 
OF  THE  LAST  ONE  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  YEARS 

BY 

ELIZABETH  ATKINS,  Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR    IN    ENGLISH, 
UNIVERSITY   OF    MINNESOTA 


BOSTON 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXXII 


MADE    IN    U.    S.    A. 


copyright,    1922, 
By  Marshall  Jones  Company 


Press  of 
J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A, 


HARTLEY  and  NELLY  ALEXANDER 


PREFACE 

Utterances  of  poets  regarding  their  character  and 
mission  have  perhaps  received  less  attention  than 
they  deserve.  The  tacit  assumption  of  the  majority 
of  critics  seems  to  be  that  the  poet,  like  the  criminal, 
is  the  last  man  who  should  pass  judgment  upon  his 
own  case.  Yet  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  this 
view  is  correct.  Introspective  analysis  on  the  part 
of  the  poet  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  be  as 
productive  of  aesthetic  revelation  as  the  more  objec- 
tive criticism  of  the  mere  observer  of  literary  phe- 
nomena. Moreover,  aside  from  its  intrinsic  merits, 
the  poet's  self -exposition  must  have  interest  for  all 
students  of  Platonic  philosophy,  inasmuch  as  Plato's 
famous  challenge  was  directed  only  incidentally  to 
critics  of  poetry;  primarily  it  was  to  Poetry  herself, 
whom  he  urged  to  make  just  such  lyrical  defense  as 
we  are  to  consider. 

The  method  here  employed  is  not  to  present  ex- 
haustively the  substance  of  individual  poems  treat- 
ing of  poets.     Analysis  of  Wordsworth's  Prelude, 

vii 


Vlll  PREFACE 

Browning's  Sordello,  and  the  like,  could  scarcely 
give  more  than  a  re-presentation  of  what  is  already 
available  to  the  reader  in  notes  and  essays  on  those 
poems.  The  purpose  here  is  rather  to  pass  in  review 
the  main  body  of  such  verse  written  in  the  last  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years.  We  are  concerned,  to  be 
sure,  with  pointing  out  idiosyncratic  conceptions  of 
individual  writers,  and  with  tracing  the  vogue  of 
passing  theories.  The  chief  interest,  however,  should 
lie  in  the  discovery  of  an  essential  unity  in  many 
poets'  views  on  their  own  character  and  mission. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  scarcely  an  idea  relative  to 
the  poet  which  is  not  somewhere  contradicted  in 
the  verse  of  this  period,  and  the  attempt  has  been 
made  to  be  wholly  impartial  in  presenting  all  sides 
of  each  question.  Indeed,  the  subject  may  seem  to 
be  one  in  which  dualism  is  inescapable.  The  poet 
is,  in  one  sense,  a  hybrid  creature;  he  is  the  lover 
of  the  sensual  and  of  the  spiritual,  for  he  is  the  re- 
vealer  of  the  spiritual  in  the  sensual.  Consequently 
it  is  not  strange  that  practically  every  utterance  which 
we  may  consider, — even  such  as  deal  with  the  most 
superficial  aspects  of  the  poet,  as  his  physical  beauty 
or  his  health, — falls  naturally  into  one  of  two  divi- 
sions, accordingly  as  the  poet  feels  the  sensual  or 
the  spiritual  aspect  of  his  nature  to  be  the  more  im- 


PREFACE  IX 

portant.  Yet  the  fact  remains  that  the  quest  of 
unity  has  been  the  most  interesting  feature  of  this  in- 
vestigation. The  man  in  whose  nature  the  poet's 
two  apparently  contradictory  desires  shall  wholly 
harmonize  is  the  ideal  whom  practically  all  modern 
English  poets  are  attempting  to  present. 

Minor  poets  have  been  considered,  perhaps  to  an 
unwarranted  degree.  In  the  Victorian  period,  for 
instance,  there  may  seem  something  grotesque  in 
placing  Tupper's  judgments  on  verse  beside  Brown- 
ing's. Yet,  since  it  is  true  that  so  slight  a  poet  as 
William  Lisles  Bowles  influenced  Coleridge,  and 
that  T.  E.  Chivers  probably  influenced  Poe,  it  seems 
that  in  a  study  of  this  sort  minor  writers  have  a 
place.  In  addition,  where  the  views  of  one  minor 
verse-writer  might  be  negligible,  the  views  of  a  large 
group  are  frequently  highly  significant,  not  only  as 
testifying  to  the  vogue  of  ephemeral  ideas,  but  as 
demonstrating  that  great  and  small  in  the  poetic 
world  have  the  same  general  attitude  toward  their 
gift.  It  is  perhaps  true  that  minor  poets  have  been 
more  loquacious  on  the  subject  of  their  nature  than 
have  greater  ones,  but  some  attempt  is  here  made  to 
hold  them  within  bounds,  so  that  they  may  not  drown 
out  the  more  meaningful  utterances  of  the  master 
singers. 


X  PREFACE 

The  last  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  have  been 
chosen  for  discussion,  since  the  beginning  of  the  ro- 
mantic movement  marked  the  rise  of  a  pecuHarly  self- 
conscious  attitude  in  the  poet,  and  brought  his  per- 
sonaHty  into  new  prominence.  Contemporary  verse 
seems  to  fall  within  the  scope  of  these  studies,  in- 
asmuch as  the  "renaissance  of  poetry"  (as  enthusi- 
asts like  to  term  the  new  stirring  of  interest  in  verse) 
is  revealing  young  poets  of  the  present  day  even 
more  frank  in  self-revealment  than  were  poets  of 
twenty  years  ago. 

The  excursion  through  modern  English  poetry 
involved  in  these  studies  has  been  a  pleasant  one. 
The  value  and  interest  of  such  an  investigation  was 
first  pointed  out  to  me  by  Professor  Louise  Pound 
of  the  University  of  Nebraska.  It  is  with  sincere 
appreciation  that  I  here  express  my  indebtedness  to 
her,  both  for  the  initial  suggestion,  and  for  the  in- 
valuable advice  which  I  have  received  from  her  dur- 
ing  my  procedure.  I  owe  much  gratitude  also  to 
President  William  Allan  Neilson  of  Smith  College, 
who  was  formerly  my  teacher  in  RadclifTe  College, 
and  to  Professor  Hartley  Burr  Alexander,  of  the  de- 
partment of  Philosophy  at  the  University  of  Ne- 
braska, who  has  given  me  unstinted  help  and  gen- 
erous encouragement.  Elizabeth  Atkins. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PACK 

Preface vii 

I.     The  Ego-Centric  Circle       ....         i 

Apparent  futility  of  verse  dealing  with  the  poet. 
— Its  justification. — The  poet's  personality  the  hid- 
den theme  of  all  verse. — The  poet's  egotism. — 
Belief  that  his  inspirations  are  divine. — Belief  in 
the  immortality  of  his  poems. — The  romantic  view 
that  the  creator  is  greater  than  his  creations. — 
The  poet's  contempt  for  uninspired  men. — Reac- 
tion of  the  public  to  the  poet's  contempt. — Its 
retaliation  in  jeers. — The  poet's  wounded  vanity. 
— His  morbid  self-consciousness. — His  self-im- 
posed solitude. — Enhancement  of  his  egotism  by 
solitude. 

II.     The  Mortal  Coil 56 

View  that  genius  results  from  a  happy  combi- 
nation of  physical  conditions. — The  poet's  reluc- 
tance to  embrace  such  a  theory. — His  heredity.-^ 
Rank. — Patricians  vs.  children  of  the  soil. — His 
body. — Poetic  beauty. — Features  expressing  alert 
and  delicate  senses. — Contrary  conception  of  poet 
rapt  away  from  sense. — Blindness. — Physique. — 
Health. — Hyper-sensibility  of  invalids. — Escape 
from  fleshly  bondage  afforded  by  perfect  health. 
— The  poet's  sex. — Limitations  of  the  woman 
poet. — Her  claims. — The  poet's  habitat. — Vogue 
of  romantic  solitude. — Savage  environment. — Its 
advantages. — Growing  popularity  of  the  city  poet. 
— The  wanderer. — The  financial  status  of  the  poet. 

zi 


XU  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

— Poverty  as  sharpener  of  sensibility. — The  poet's 
age. — Vogue  of  the  young  poet. — Purity  of  youth- 
ful emotions. — Early  death. — Claims  of  the  aged 
poet. — Contemplation  after  active  life. 

III.  The  Poet  as  Lover iii 

The  classic  conception. — Love  as  a  disturbing 
factor  in  composition. — The  romantic  conception. 
— Love  the  source  of  inspiration. — Fusion  of  in- 
tense passion  with  repose  essential  to  poetry. — 
Poetic  love  and  Platonic  love  synonymous. — Sen- 
sual love  not  suggestive. — The  poet's  ascent  to 
ideal  love. — Analogy  with  ascent  described  in 
Plato's  Symposium. — Discontent  with  ephemeral- 
ness  of  passion. — Poetry  a  means  of  rendering 
passion  eternal. — Insatiability  of  the  poet's  af- 
fections.— Idealization  of  his  mistress. — Ideal 
beauty  the  real  object  of  his  love. — Fickleness. — 
Its  justification. — Advantage  in  seeing  varied  as- 
pects of  ideal  beauty. — Remoteness  as  an  essential 
factor  in  ideal  love. — Sluggishness  resulting  from 
complete  content. — Aspiration  the  poetic  attitude. 
— Abstract  love-poetry,  consciously  addressed  to 
ideal  beauty. — Its  merits  and  defects. — The  sen- 
suous as  well  as  the  ideal  indispensable  to  poetry. 

IV.  The  Spark  from  Heaven     ....     i6i 

Reticence  of  great  geniuses  regarding  inspira- 
tion.— Mystery  of  inspiration. — The  poet's  curi- 
osity as  to  his  inspired  moments. — Wild  desire 
preceding  inspiration. — Sudden  arrest  rather  than 
satisfaction  of  desire. — Ecstasy. — Analogy  with 
intoxication. — Attitude  of  reverence  during  in- 
spired moments. — Feeling  that  an  outside  power  is 
responsible. — Attempts  to  give  a  rational  account 
of  inspiration. — The  theory  of  the  sub-conscious. 
— Prenatal  memory. — Reincarnation  of  dead 
geniuses. — Varied  conceptions  of  the  spirit  inspir- 
ing song  as  the  Muse,  nature,  the  spirit  of  the  uni- 


CONTENTS  Xlll 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

verse. — The  poet's  absolute  surrender  to  this 
power. — Madness. — Contempt  for  the  limitations 
of  the  human  reason. — Belief  in  infallibility  of 
inspirations. — Limitations  of  inspiration. — Tran- 
sience.— Expression  not  given  from  without. — The 
work  of  the  poet's  conscious  intelligence, — Need 
for  making  the  vision  intelligible. — Quarrel  over 
the  value  of  hard  work. 

V.     The  Poet's  Morality 212 

The  poet's  reliance  upon  feeling  as  sole  moral 
guide. — Attack  upon  his  morals  made  by  philoso- 
phers, puritans,  philistines. — Professedly  wicked 
poets. — Their  rarity. — Revolt  against  mass-feeling. 
— The  aesthetic  appeal  of  sin. — The  morally  frail 
poet,  handicapped  by  susceptibility  to  passion. — 
The  typical  poet's  repudiation  of  immorality. — 
Feeling  that  virtue  and  poetry  are  inseparable. — 
Minor  explanations  for  this  conviction. — The 
"poet  a  poem"  theory. — Identity  of  the  good  and 
the  beautiful. — The  poet's  quarrel  with  the  philis- 
tine. — The  poet's  horror  of  restraint. — The  Philis- 
tine's unfairness  to  the  poet's  innocence. — The 
poet's  quarrel  with  the  puritan. — The  poet's  horror 
of  asceticism. — The  poet's  quarrel  with  the  phi- 
losopher.— Feeling  upon  which  the  poet  relies 
allied  to  Platonic  intuition. 

VI.     The  Poet's  Religion 260 

Threefold  attack  upon  the  poet's  religion. — His 
lack  of  theological  temper. — His  lack  of  rever- 
ence.— His  lack  of  conformance. — The  poet's  de- 
fense.— Materialistic  belief  deadening  to  poetry. — 
His  idealistic  temper. — His  pantheistic  leanings. 
— His  reverence  for  beauty. — His  repudiation  of 
a  religion  that  humbles  him. — Compatibility  of 
pride  and  pantheism. — The  poet's  non-confor- 
mance.— His  occasional  perverseness. — Inspiring 
nature  of  doubt. — The  poet's  thirst  for  God — The 
occasional  orthodox  poet. 


XIV  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VII.     The  Pragmatic  Issue 284 

The  poet's  alleged  uselessness. — His  effeminacy. 
— His  virility. — The  poet  warrior. — Incompatibility 
of  poets  and  materialists. — Plato's  charge  that 
poetry  is  inferior  to  actual  life. — The  concurrence 
of  certain  soldier  poets  in  Plato's  charge. — Poetry 
as  an  amusement  only. — The  value  of  faithful 
imitation. — The  realists. — Poetry  as  a  solace. — 
Poetry  a  reflection  of  the  ideal  essence  of  things. 
— Love  of  beauty  the  poet's  guide  in  disentangling 
ideality  from  the  accidents  of  things. — Beauty  as 
truth. — The  poet  as  seer. — The  quarrel  with  the 
philosopher. — The  truth  of  beauty  vs.  cold  facts. 
— Proof  of  validity  of  the  poet's  truth. — His  skill 
as  prophet. — The  poet's  mission  as  reformer. — His 
impatience  with  practical  reforms. — Belief  in 
essential  goodness  of  men,  since  beauty  is  the 
essence  of  things. — Reform  a  matter  of  allowing 
all  things  to  express  their  essence. — Enthusiasm 
for  liberty. — Denial  of  the  war-poet's  charge. — 
Poets  the  authors  of  liberty. — Poets  the  real  rulers 
of  mankind. — The  world's  appreciation  of  their 
importance. — Their  immortality. 

VIII.     A  Sober  Afterthought 327 

Denial  that  the  views  of  poets  on  the  poet  are 
heterogeneous. — Poets'  identity  of  purpose  in  dis- 
cussing poets. — Apparent  contradictions  in  views. 
— Apparent  inconsistency  in  the  thought  of  each 
poet. — The  two-fold  interests  of  poets. — The  poet 
as  harmonizer  of  sensual  and  spiritual. — Balance 
of  sense  and  spirit  in  the  poetic  temperament. — 
Injustice  to  one  element  or  the  other  in  most 
literary  criticism. — Limitations  of  the  poet's  prose 
criticism. — Superiority  of  his  critical  expressions 
in  verse. — The  poet's  importance. — Poetry  as  a 
proof  of  the  idealistic  philosophy. 

Index 353 


THE  POET'S  POET 


THE  POET'S  POET 


THE  EGOCENTRIC  CIRCLE 

"|\yJ'OST  of  us,  mere  men  that  we  are,  find  our- 
-'■^-^  selves  cani]^ht  in  some  entans^lement  of  our 
mortal  coil  even  before  we  have  fairly  embarked 
upon  the  enterprise  of  thinking  our  case  through. 
The  art  of  self -reflection  which  appeals  to  us  as  so 
eminent  and  so  human,  is  it  after  all  much  more 
than  a  vaporous  vanity?  We  name  its  subject  "hu- 
man nature" ;  we  give  it  a  raiment  of  timeless  gener- 
alities; but  in  the  end  the  show^  of  thought  dis- 
closes little  beyond  the  obstreperous  bit  of  a  "me" 
which  has  blown  all  the  fume.  The  "psychologist's 
fallacy,"  or  again  the  "egocentric  predicament"  of 
the  philosopher  of  the  Absolute,  these  are  but 
tagged  examples  of  a  type  of  futile  self -return  (we 
name  it  "discovery"  to  save  our  faces)  which  comes 
more  or  less  to  men  of  all  kinds  when  they  take 
honest-eyed  measure  of  the  consequences  of  their 
own  valuations  of  themselves.  We  pose  for  the  por- 
trait ;  we  admire  the  Lion ;  but  we  have  only  to  turn 
our  heads  to  catch-glimpse  Punch  with  thumb  to 

nose.      And    then,    of    course,    we   mock    our    own 

I 


2  The  Poet's  Poet 

humiliation,  which  is  another  kind  of  vanity;  and, 
having  done  this  penance,  pursue  again  our  self- 
returning  fate.  The  theme  is,  after  all,  one  we 
cannot  drop ;  it  is  the  mortal  coil. 

In  the  moment  of  our  revulsion  from  the  inevi- 
table return  upon  itself  of  the  human  reason,  many 
of  us  have  clung  with  the  greater  desperation  to  the 
hope  offered  by  poetry.  By  the  way  of  intuition 
poets  promise  to  carry  us  beyond  the  boundary  of  the 
vicious  circle.  When  the  ceaseless  round  of  the  real 
world  has  come  to  nauseate  us,  they  assure  us  that 
by  simply  relaxing  our  hold  upon  actuality  we  may 
escape  from  the  squirrel-cage.  By  consenting  to  the 
prohibition,  "Bold  lover,  never,  never  canst  thou 
kiss!"  we  may  enter  the  realm  of  ideality,  where 
our  dizzy  brains  grow  steady,  and  our  pulses  are 
calmed,  as  we  gaze  upon  the  quietude  of  transcen- 
dent beauty. 

But  what  are  we  to  say  when,  on  opening  almost 
any  book  of  comparatively  recent  verse,  we  find,  not 
the  self-forgetfulness  attendant  upon  an  ineffable 
vision,  but  advertisement  of  the  author's  importance? 
His  argument  we  find  running  somewhat  as  fol- 
lows :  *T  am  superior  to  you  because  I  write  poetry. 
What  do  I  write  poetry  about?  Why,  about  my  su- 
periority, of  course!"  Must  we  not  conclude  that 
the  poet,  with  the  rest  of  us,  is  speeding  around  the 
hippodrome  of  his  own  self-centered  consciousness? 

Indeed  the  poet's  circle  is  likely  to  appear  to  us 
even  more  vicious  than  that  of  other  men.  To  be 
sure,  we  remember  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  contention, 


The  Egocentric  Circle  3 

supported  by  his  anecdote  of  the  loquacious  horse- 
man, that  men  of  all  callings  are  equally  disposed  to 
vaunt  themselves.  If  the  poet  seems  especially  volu- 
ble about  his  merits,  this  may  be  owing  to  the  fact 
that,  words  being  the  tools  of  his  trade,  he  is  more 
apt  than  other  men  in  giving  expression  to  his  self- 
importance.  But  our  specific  objection  to  the  poet  is 
not  met  by  this  explanation.  Even  the  horseman 
does  not  expect  panegyrics  of  his  profession  to  take 
the  place  of  horseshoes.  The  inventor  does  not 
issue  an  autobiography  in  lieu  of  a  new  invention. 
The  public  would  seem  justified  in  reminding  the 
poet  that,  having  a  reasonable  amount  of  curiosity 
about  human  nature,  it  will  eagerly  devour  the  poet's 
biography,  properly  labeled,  but  only  after  he  has 
forgotten  himself  long  enough  to  write  a  poem  that 
will  prove  his  genius,  and  so  lend  worth  to  the 
perusal  of  his  idiosyncratic  records,  and  his  judg- 
ments on  poetic  composition. 

The  first  impulse  of  our  revulsion  from  the  self- 
infatuated  poet  is  to  confute  him  with  the  potent 
name  of  Aristotle,  and  show  him  his  doom  fore- 
ordained in  the  book  of  poetic  Revelations.  "The 
poet  should  speak  as  little  as  possible  in  his  own  per- 
son," we  read,  "for  it  is  not  this  that  makes  him 
an  imitator."  ^  One  cannot  too  much  admire  Aris- 
totle's canniness  in  thus  nipping  the  poet's  egotism 
in  the  bud,  for  he  must  have  seen  clearly  that  if  the 
poet  began  to  talk  in  his  own  person,  he  would  soon 
lead  the  conversation  around  to  himself,  and  that, 

^Poetics,  1460  a. 


4  The  Poet's  Poet 

once  launched  on  that  inexhaustible  subject,  he  would 
never  be  ready  to  return  to  his  original  theme. 

We  may  regret  that  we  have  not  Aristotle's  sanc- 
tion for  condemning  also  extra-poetical  advertise- 
ments of  the  poet's  personality,  as  a  hindrance  to  our 
seeing  the  ideal  world  through  his  poetry.  In  cer- 
tain moods  one  feels  it  a  blessing  that  we  possess  no 
romantic  traditions  of  Homer,  to  get  in  the  way  of 
our  passing  impartial  judgment  upon  his  works.  Our 
intimate  knowledge  of  nineteenth  century  poets  has 
been  of  doubtful  benefit  to  us.  Wordsworth  has 
shaken  into  what  promises  to  be  his  permanent 
place  among  the  English  poets  much  more  expedi- 
tiously than  has  Byron.  Is  this  not  because  in 
Wordsworth's  case  the  reader  is  not  conscious  of  a 
magnetic  personality  drawing  his  judgment  away 
from  purely  aesthetic  standards?  Again,  consider 
the  case  of  Keats.  For  us  the  facts  of  his  life  must 
color  almost  every  line  he  wrote.  How  are  we  to 
determine  whether  his  sonnet.  When  I  Have  Fears, 
is  great  poetry  or  not,  so  long  as  it  fills  our  minds 
insistently  with  the  pity  of  his  love  for  Fanny 
Brawne,  and  his  epitaph  in  the  Roman  graveyard? 

Christopher  North  has  been  much  upbraided  by  a 
hero-worshiping  generation,  but  one  may  go  too  far 
in  condemning  the  Scotch  sense  in  his  contention : 

Mr.  Keats  we  have  often  heard  spoken  of  in  terms  of 
great  kindness,  and  we  have  no  doubt  that  his  manners 
and  feelings  are  calculated  to  make  his  friends  love 
him.  But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  our  opinion  of 
their  poetry?     What,  in  the  name  of  wonder,  does  it 


The  Egocentric  Circle  5 

concern  us,  whether  these  men  sit  among  themselves 
with  milcl  or  with  sulky  faces,  eating  their  mutton 
steaks,  and  drinking  their  porter?^ 

If  we  are  reluctant  to  sponsor  words  printed  in 
Blackwoods,  we  may  be  more  at  ease  in  agreeing 
with  the  same  sentiments  as  expressed  by  Keats  him- 
self. After  a  too  protracted  dinner  party  with 
Wordsworth  and  Hunt,  Keats  gave  vent  to  his  feel- 
ings as  follows : 

Poetry  should  be  great  and  unobtrusive,  a  thing  that 
enters  into  one's  soul,  and  does  not  startle  or  amaze  it 
with  itself,  but  with  its  subject.  How  beautiful  are  the 
retired  flowers!  How  they  would  lose  their  beauty 
were  they  to  throng  into  the  highway  crying  out, 
"Admire  me,  I  am  a  violet!  Dote  upon  me,  I  am  a 
primrose !"...!  will  cut  all  this — I  will  have  no  more 
of  Wordsworth  or  Hunt  in  particular.  ...  I  don't 
mean  to  deny  Wordsworth's  grandeur  and  Hunt's 
merit,  but  I  mean  to  say  that  we  need  not  be  teased  with 
grandeur  and  merit  when  we  can  have  them  uncontam- 
inated  and  unobtrusive.^ 

If  acquaintance  with  a  poet  prevents  his  contem- 
poraries from  fixing  their  attention  exclusively  upon 
the  merits  of  his  verse,  in  how  much  better  case 
is  posterity,  if  the  poet's  personality  makes  its  way 
into  the  heart  of  his  poetry?  We  have  Browning's 
dictum  on  Shakespeare's  sonnets. 

With  this  key 
Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart.    Once  more 
Did  Shakespeare?     If  so,  the  less  Shakespeare  he.^ 

*  Sidney  Colvin,  John  Keats,  p.  478. 
'Ibid.,  p.  253. 

*  House. 


6  The  Poet's  Poet 

Did  Browning  mean  that  Shakespeare  was  less  the 
poet,  as  well  as  less  the  dramatist,  if  he  revealed 
himself  to  us  in  his  poetry?  And  is  this  our  con- 
tention ? 

It  seems  a  reasonable  contention,  at  least,  the 
more  so  since  poets  are  practically  unanimous  in 
describing  inspiration  as  lifting  them  out  of  them- 
selves, into  self-forgetful  ecstasy.  Even  that  arch- 
egoist,  Byron,  concedes  this  point.  "To  withdraw 
myself  from  myself — oh,  that  accursed  selfishness," 
he  writes,  "has  ever  been  my  entire,  my  sincere  mo- 
tive in  scribbling  at  all."  ^  Surely  we  may  complain 
that  it  is  rather  hard  on  us  if  the  poet  can  escape 
from  himself  only  by  throwing  himself  at  the  read- 
er's head. 

It  would  seem  natural  to  conclude  from  the  self- 
lessness of  inspiration  that  the  more  frequently  in- 
spired the  poet  is,  the  less  will  he  himself  be  an  in- 
teresting subject  for  verse.  Again  we  must  quote 
Keats  to  confute  his  more  self-centered  brothers. 
"A  poet,"  Keats  says,  "is  the  most  unpoetical  of 
anything  in  existence,  because  he  has  no  identity; 
he  is  continually  in  for,  and  filling,  some  other  body. 
The  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  and  men  and  women 
who  are  creatures  of  impulse  are  poetical  and  have 
about  them  an  unchangeable  attribute;  the  poet  has 
none,  no  identity."  ^  The  same  conviction  is  dif- 
ferently phrased  by  Landor.  The  poet  is  a  luminous 
body,  whose  function  is  to  reveal  other  objects,  not 

^  Letters  and  Journals,  ed.  Rowland  E.  Prothero,  November 
26,  1813. 

'Letter  to  Richard  Woodhouse,  October  27,  1818. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  7 

himself,  to  us.  Therefore  Landor  considers  our 
scanty  knowledge  of  Shakespeare  as  compared  with 
lesser  poets  a  natural  consequence  of  the  self -obliter- 
ating splendor  of  his  genius: 

In  poetry  there  is  but  one  supreme, 

Though  there  are  many  angels  round  his  throne, 

Mighty  and  beauteous,  while  his  face  is  hid.^ 

But  though  an  occasional  poet  lends  his  voice  in 
support  of  our  censure,  the  average  poet  would 
brush  aside  our  complaints  with  impatience.  What 
right  have  we  to  accuse  him  of  swerving  from  the 
subject  matter  proper  to  poetry,  while  we  appear 
to  have  no  clear  idea  as  to  what  the  legitimate  sub- 
ject matter  is?  Precisely  what  are  we  looking  for, 
that  we  are  led  to  complain  that  the  massive  out- 
lines of  the  poet's  figure  obscure  our  view? 

Now  just  here  we  who  assail  the  poet  are  likely 
to  turn  our  guns  upon  one  another,  for  we  are 
brought  up  against  the  stone  wall  of  age-old  dispute 
over  the  function  of  the  poet.  He  should  hold  up 
his  magic  mirror  to  the  physical  world,  some  of  us 
declare,  and  set  the  charm  of  immortality  upon  the 
life  about  us.  Far  from  it,  others  retort.  The  poet 
should  redeem  us  from  the  flesh,  and  show  us  the 
ideal  forms  of  things,  which  bear,  it  may  be,  very 
slight  resemblance  to  their  imitations  in  this  world. 

Now  while  we  are  sadly  meditating  our  inability 
to  batter  our  way  through  this  obstacle  to  perfect 
clarity,  the  poets  championing  the  opposing  views, 
'  On  Shakespeare. 


8  The  Poet's  Poet 

like  Plato's  sophistic  brothers,  Euthydemus  and 
Dionysodorus,  proceed  to  knock  us  from  one  to  the 
other  side,  justifying  their  self -centered  verse  by 
either  theory.  Do  we  maintain  that  the  poet  should 
reflect  the  life  about  him?  Then,  holding  the  mir- 
ror up  to  life,  he  will  naturally  be  the  central  figure 
in  the  reflection.  Do  we  maintain  that  the  poet 
should  reveal  an  ideal  world?  Then,  being  alone 
of  all  men  transported  by  his  vision  into  this  ideal 
realm,  he  will  have  no  competitors  to  dispute  his 
place  as  chief  character. 

At  first  thought  it  may  have  appeared  obvious 
to  us  that  the  idealistic  poet,  who  claims  that  his 
art  is  a  revelation  of  a  transcendental  entity,  is  soar- 
ing to  celestial  realms  whither  his  mundane  person- 
ality cannot  follow.  Leaving  below  him  the  dusty 
atmosphere  of  the  actual  world,  why  should  he  not 
attain  to  ideas  in  their  purity,  uncolored  by  his  own 
individuality?  But  we  must  in  justice  remember 
that  the  poet  cannot,  in  the  same  degree  as  the  mathe- 
matician, present  his  ideals  nakedly.  They  are,  like 
the  Phidian  statues  of  the  Fates,  inseparable  from 
their  filmy  veiling.  Beauty  seems  to  be  differen- 
tiated from  the  other  Platonic  ideas  by  precisely 
this  attribute,  that  it  must  be  embodied.  What  else 
is  the  meaning  of  the  statement  in  the  Fhcedrus, 
"This  is  the  privilege  of  beauty,  that,  being  the  love- 
liest (of  the  ideas)  she  is  also  the  most  palpable  to 
sight?"  ^  Now,  whatever  one's  stand  on  the  ques- 
tion of  nature  versus  humanity  in  art,  one  must 
'§251. 


T|iE  Egocentric  Circle  9 

admit  that  embodying  ideals  means,  in  the  long  run, 
personifying  them.  The  poet,  despising  the  sordid 
and  unwieldy  natures  of  men,  may  try,  as  Words- 
worth did,  to  give  us  a  purer  crystallization  of  his 
ideas  in  nature,  but  it  is  really  his  own  personality, 
scattered  to  the  four  winds,  that  he  is  offering  us 
in  the  guise  of  nature,  as  the  habiliments  of  his 
thought.  Reflection  leads  us  to  agree  with  Cole- 
ridge : 

In  our  life  alone  does  nature  live, 

Ours  is  her  wedding  garment,  ours  her  shrowd.^ 

The  poet  may  not  always  be  conscious  of  this,  any 
more  than  Keats  was ;  his  traits  may  be  so  broadcast 
that  he  is  in  the  position  of  the  philosopher  who, 
from  the  remote  citadel  of  his  head,  disowns  his 
own  toes;  nevertheless,  a  sense  of  tingling  oneness 
with  him  is  the  secret  of  nature's  attraction.  Walt 
Whitman,  who  conceives  of  the  poet's  personality  as 
the  most  pervasive  thing  in  the  universe,  arrives  at 
his  conviction  by  the  same  reflection  as  that  of 
Keats,  telling  us. 

There  was  a  child  went  forth  every  day, 
And  the  first  object  he  looked  upon,  that  object  he 
became. 

Perhaps  Alice  Meynell  has  best  expressed  the  phe- 
nomenon, in  a  sonnet  called  The  Love  of  Narcissus: 

Like  him  who  met  his  own  eyes  in  the  river, 
The  poet  trembles  at  his  own  long  gaze 

^  Ode  to  Dejection. 


10  The  Poet's  Poet 

That  meets  him  through  the  changing  nights  and  days 

From  out  great  Nature ;  all  her  waters  quiver 

With  his  fair  image  facing  him  forever : 

The  music  that  he  listens  to  betrays 

His  own  heart  to  his  ears :  by  trackless  ways 

His  wild  thoughts  tend  to  him  in  long  endeavor. 

His  dreams  are  far  among  the  silent  hills ; 

His  vague  voice  calls  him  from  the  darkened  plain ; 

With  winds  at  night  vague  recognition  thrills 

His  lonely  heart  with  piercing  love  and  pain ; 

He  knows  again  his  mirth  in  mountain  rills, 

His  weary  tears  that  touch  him  in  the  rain. 

Possibly  we  may  concede  that  his  fusion  with  all 
nature  renders  the  poet's  personality  so  diaphanous 
that  his  presence  is  unobtrusive  in  poetry  of  ideas, 
but  we  may  still  object  to  his  thrusting  himself  into 
realistic  poetry.  Shelley's  poet-heroes  we  will  tol- 
erate, as  translucent  mediums  of  his  thought,  but 
we  are  not  inclined  to  accept  Byron's,  when  we  seek 
a  panoramic  view  of  this  world.  Poetry  gains  mani- 
fold representation  of  life,  we  argue,  in  proportion 
as  the  author  represses  his  personal  bias,  and  ap- 
proximates the  objective  view  that  a  scientist  gives. 
We  cannot  but  sympathize  with  Sidney  Lanier's 
complaint  against  "your  cold  jellyfish  poets  that 
wrinkle  themselves  about  a  pebble  of  a  theme  and 
let  us  see  it  through  their  substance,  as  if  that  were 
a  great  feat."  ^ 

In  answer,  champions  of  the  ubiquitous  poet  in 
recent  realistic  verse  may  point  to  the  Canterbury 
Tales,  and  show  us  Chaucer  ambling  along  with  the 
^  Poem   Outlines. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  ii 

other  pilgrims.  His  presence,  they  remind  us,  in- 
stead of  distorting  his  picture  of  fourteenth-cen- 
tury life,  lends  intimacy  to  our  view  of  it.  We 
can  only  feebly  retort  that,  despite  his  girth,  the 
poet  is  the  least  conspicuous  figure  in  that  pro- 
cession, whereas  a  modern  poet  would  shoulder 
himself  ahead  of  the  knight,  steal  the  hearts  of  all 
the  ladies,  from  Madame  Eglantine  to  the  Wife  of 
Bath,  and  change  the  destinies  of  each  of  his  rivals 
ere  Canterbury  was  reached. 

We  return  to  our  strongest  argument  for  the 
invisible  poet.  What  of  Shakespeare?  we  reiter- 
ate. Well,  the  poets  might  remind  us  that  criticism 
of  late  years  has  been  laying  more  and  more  stress 
upon  the  personality  of  Shakespeare,  in  the  spirit 
of  Hartley  Coleridge's  lines, 

Great  poet,  'twas  thy  art 
To  know  thyself,  and  in  thyself  to  be 
Whate'er  love,  hate,  ambition,  destiny, 
Or  the  firm,  fatal  purpose  of  the  heart 
Can  make  of  man.^ 

If  this  trend  of  criticism  is  in  the  right  direction, 
then  the  apparent  objectivity  of  the  poet  must  be 
pure  camouflage,  and  it  is  his  own  personality  that 
he  is  giving  us  all  the  time,  in  the  guise  of  one 
character  and  another.  In  this  case,  not  his  frank 
confession  of  his  presence  in  his  poetry,  but  his 
self-concealment,  falsifies  his  representation  of  life. 
Since  we  have  quoted  Browning's  apparent  criticism 

*  Shakespeare. 


12  The  Poet's  Poet 

of  the  self-revealing  poet,  it  is  only  fair  to  quote 
some  of  his  unquestionably  sincere  utterances  on 
the  other  side  of  the  question.  "You  speak  out, 
you,"  he  wrote  to  Elizabeth  Barrett;  ^  "I  only  make 
men  and  women  speak — give  you  truth  broken  into 
prismatic  hues,  and  fear  the  pure  white  light." 
Again  he  wrote,  "I  never  have  begun,  even,  what  I 
hope  I  was  born  to  begin  and  end, — 'R.B.',  a  poem."  ^ 
And  Mrs.  Browning,  usually  a  better  spokesman  for 
the  typical  English  poet  than  is  Browning  himself, 
likewise  conceives  it  the  artist's  duty  to  show  us  his 
own  nature,  to  be  "greatly  himself  always,  which  is 
the  hardest  thing  for  a  man  to  be,  perhaps."  ^ 

"Art,"  says  Aristotle,  "is  an  imitation  of  life." 
"L'art,  mes  enfants,"  says  the  modern  poet,  speak- 
ing through  the  lips  of  Verlaine,  "c'est  d'etre  ahso- 
liiment  soi-meme."  Of  course  if  one  concedes  that 
the  poet  is  the  only  thing  in  life  worth  bothering 
about,  the  two  statements  become  practically  identi- 
cal. It  may  be  true  that  the  poet's  universal  sym- 
pathies make  him  the  most  complex  type  that  civiliza- 
tion has  produced,  and  consequently  the  most  eco- 
nomical figure  to  present  as  a  sample  of  humanity. 
But  Taine  has  offered  us  a  simpler  way  of  har- 
monizing the  two  statements,  not  by  juggling  with 
Aristotle's  word  "life,"  but  with  the  word  "imita- 
tion." "Art,"  says  Taine,  "is  nature  seen  through 
a  temperament." 

Now  it  may  be  that  to  Aristotle  imitation,  Mime- 

'  January  13,   1845. 

'Letter  to  Elizabeth  Barrett,  February  3,  1845. 

*  Letter  to  Robert  Browning,  September  9,  1845. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  13 

scis,  did  mean  "seing  through  a  temperament."  But 
certainly,  had  he  used  that  phrase,  he  would  have  laid 
the  stress  on  "seeing,"  rather  than  on  "tempera- 
ment." Aristotle  would  judge  a  man  to  have  poetic 
temperament  if  his  mind  were  like  a  telescope,  sharp- 
ening the  essential  outlines  of  things.  Modern  poets, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  inclined  to  grant  that  a  per- 
son has  poetic  temperament  only  if  his  mind  resem- 
bles a  jeweled  window,  transforming  all  that  is  seen 
through  it,  if  by  any  chance  something  is  seen 
through  it. 

If  the  modern  poet  sees  the  world  colored  red  or 
green  or  violet  by  his  personality,  it  is  well  for  the 
interests  of  truth,  we  must  admit,  that  he  make  it 
clear  to  us  that  his  nature  is  the  transforming  me- 
dium, but  how  comes  it  that  he  fixes  his  attention 
so  exclusively  upon  the  colors  of  things,  for  which 
his  own  nature  is  responsible,  and  ignores  the  forms 
of  things,  which  are  not  affected  by  him?  How 
comes  it  that  the  colored  lights  thrown  on  nature 
by  the  stained  windows  of  his  soul  are  so  important 
to  him  that  he  feels  justified  in  painting  for  us,  not 
nature,  but  stained-glass  windows? 

In  part  this  is,  as  has  often  been  said,  a  result 
of  the  individualizing  trend  of  modern  art.  The 
broad  general  outlines  of  things  have  been  "done" 
by  earlier  artists,  and  there  is  no  chance  for  later 
artists  to  vary  them,  but  the  play  of  light  and  shade 
offers  infinite  possibilities  of  variation.  If  one  poet 
shows  us  the  world  higlily  colored  by  his  per- 
sonality, it  is  inevitable  that  his   followers  should 


14  The  Poet's  Poet 

have  their  attention  caught  by  the  different  color- 
ing which  their  own  natures  throw  upon  it.  The 
more  acute  their  sense  of  observation,  the  more  they 
will  be  interested  in  the  phenomenon.  "Of  course 
you  are  self-conscious,"  Elizabeth  Barrett  wrote  to 
Robert  Browning.  "How  could;  you  be  a  poet 
otherwise?"  ^ 

This  modern  individualizing  trend  appears  equally 
in  all  the  arts,  of  course.  Yet  the  poet's  self-con- 
sciousness appears  in  his  work  more  plainly  than 
does  that  of  painters  and  sculptors  and  musicians. 
One  wonders  if  this  may  not  be  a  consequence  of 
the  peculiar  nature  of  his  inspiration.  While  all  art 
is  doubtless  essentially  alike  in  mode  of  creation,  it 
may  not  be  fanciful  to  conceive  that  the  poet's  in- 
spiration is  surrounded  by  deeper  mystery  than  that 
of  other  geniuses,  and  that  this  accounts  for  the 
greater  prominence  of  conscious  self-analysis  in  his 
work.  That  such  a  difference  exists,  seems  obvi- 
ous. In  spite  of  the  lengths  to  which  program  mu- 
sic has  been  carried,  we  have,  so  far  as  I  know, 
practically  no  music,  outside  of  opera,  that  claims 
to  have  the  musician,  or  the  artist  in  general,  for 
its  theme.  So  sweeping  an  assertion  cannot  be  made 
regarding  painting  and  sculpture,  to  be  sure.  Near 
the  beginning  of  the  history  of  sculpture  we  are 
met  by  the  legend  of  Phidias  placing  his  own  image 
among  the  gods.  At  the  other  extreme,  chronolog- 
ically, we  are  familiar  with  Daniel  Chester  French's 
group,   Death   Staying  the  Hand  of  the   Sculptor. 

^  February  27,  1845. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  15 

Painters  not  infrequently  portray  themselves  and 
their  artist  friends.  Yet  it  is  improbable  that  the 
mass  of  material  concerned  with  the  poet's  view  of 
the  artist  can  be  paralleled.  This  is  due  in  part, 
obviously,  to  the  greater  plasticity  to  ideas  of  his 
medium,  but  may  it  not  be  due  also  to  the  fact  that 
all  other  arts  demand  an  apprenticeship,  during 
which  the  technique  is  mastered  in  a  rational,  com- 
prehensible way  ?  Whereas  the  poet  is  apt  to  forget 
that  he  has  a  technique  at  all,  since  he  shares  his 
tool,  language,  with  men  of  all  callings  whatever.  He 
feels  himself,  accordingly,  to  be  dependent  altogether 
upon  a  mysterious  "visitation"   for  his  inspiration. 

At  least  this  mystery  surrounding  his  creations 
has  much  to  do  with  removing  the  artist  from  the 
comparative  freedom  from  self -consciousness  that 
we  ascribe  to  the  general  run  of  men.  In  addition 
it  removes  him  from  the  comparative  humility  of 
other  thinkers,  who  are  wont  to  think  of  their  dis- 
coveries as  following  inevitably  upon  their  data,  so 
that  they  themselves  deserve  credit  only  as  they  are 
persistent  and  painstaking  in  following  the  clues. 
The  genesis  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  discovery  has 
been  compared  to  poetical  inspiration ;  yet  even  in 
this  case  the  difference  is  apparent,  and  Newton  did 
not  identify  himself  with  the  universe  he  conceived, 
as  the  poet  is  in  the  habit  of  doing. 

Not  being  able  to  account  for  his  inspirations,  the 
poet  seems  to  be  driven  inevitably  either  into  exces- 
sive humility,  since  he  feels  that  his  words  are  not 
his  own,  or  into  inordinate   pride,   since  he   feels 


i6  The  Poet's  Poet 

that  he  is  able  to  see  and  express  without  voHtion 
truths  that  other  men  cannot  ghmpse  with  the  ut- 
most effort.  He  may  disclaim  all  credit  for  his  per- 
formance, in  the  words  of  a  nineteenth-century  verse- 
writer  : 

This  is  the  end  of  the  book 

Written  by  God, 

I  am  the  earth  he  took, 

I  am  the  rod, 

The  iron  and  wood  which  he  struck 

With  his  sounding  rod,^ 

a  statement  that  provokes  wonder  as  to  God's  sen- 
sations at  having  such  amateurish  works  come  out 
under  his  name.  But  this  sort  of  humility  is  really 
a  protean  manifestation  of  egotism,  as  is  clear  in 
the  religious  states  that  bear  resemblance  to  the 
poet's.  This  the  Methodist  "experience  meeting" 
abundantly  illustrates,  where  endless  loquacity  is  con- 
sidered justifiable,  because  the  glory  of  one's  ex- 
perience is  due,  not  to  one's  self,  but  to  the  Almighty. 
The  minor  American  poets  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century  are  often  found  exhorting  one  another 
to  humility,  quite  after  the  prayer-meeting  tradition. 
Bitter  is  their  denunciation  of  the  poet's  arrogance  : 

A  man  that's  proud — vile  groveller  in  the  dust. 
Dependent  on  the  mercy  of  his  God 
For  every  breath.^ 

Again  they  declare  that  the  poet  should  be 

Self-reading,  not  self-loving,  they  are  twain,' 

'  L.  E.  Mitchell,  Written  at  the  End  of  a  Book. 

*  B.  Saunders,  To  Chatterton. 

'  Henry  Timrod,  A  Vision  of  Poesy. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  17 

telling  him, 

Think  not  of  thine  own  self,^ 

adding, 

Always,  O  bard,  humility  is  power.^ 

One  is  reminded  of  Mrs.  Heep's  repeated  adjura- 
tion, "Be  'umble,  Ury,"  and  the  likeness  is  not  les- 
sened when  we  find  them  ingratiatingly  sidling 
themselves  into  public  favor.  We  hear  them  timidly 
inquiring  of  their  inspiration. 

Shall  not  the  violet  bloom  ?  ^ 
and  pleading  with  their  critics, 

Lightly,  kindly  deal, 

My  buds  were  culled  amid  bright  dews 

In  morn  of  earliest  youth."* 

At  times  they  resort  to  the  mixed  metaphor  to  ex- 
press their  innocuous  unimportance,  declaring, 

A  feeble  hand  essays 
To  swell  the  tide  of  song,^ 

and  send  out  their  ideas  with  fond  insistence  upon 
their  diminutiveness : 

Go,  little  book,  and  with  thy  little  thoughts. 
Win  in  each  heart  and  memory  a  home.* 

But  among  writers  whose  names  are  recognizable 

without  an  appeal  to  a  librarian's  index,  precisely 

'  Richard  Gilder,  To  the  Poet. 

'  Henry  Timrod,  Poet  If  on  a  Lasting  Fame. 

*  Mrs.  Evans,  Apologetic. 

*Lydia  M.  Reno,  Preface  to  Early  Buds. 

*  C.  H.  Faimer,  Invocation. 

*  C.  Augustus  Price,  Dedication. 


1 8  The  Poet's  Poet 

this  attitude  is  not  met  with.  It  would  be  absurd, 
of  course,  to  deny  that  one  finds  convincingly  sin- 
cere expressions  of  modesty  among  poets  of  genu- 
ine merit.  Many  of  them  have  taken  pains  to  ex- 
press themselves  in  their  verse  as  humbled  by  the 
genius  above  their  grasp. ^  But  we  must  agree  with 
their  candid  avowals  that  they  belong  in  the  second 
rank.  The  greatest  poets  of  the  century  are  not  in 
the  habit  of  belittling  themselves.  It  is  almost  un- 
paralleled to  find  so  sweeping  a  revolutionist  of  poetic 
traditions  as  Burns  saying  of  himself: 

I  am  nae  poet,  in  a  sense, 

But  just  a  rhymer  like,  by  chance. 

And  hae  to  learning  nae  pretense. 

Yet  what  the  matter? 

Whene'er  my  muse  does  on  me  glance, 

I  jingle  at  her,^ 

Most  of  the  self-depreciatory  writers,  by  their 
very  abnegation  of  the  title,  exalt  the  supreme  poet 
There  are  few  indeed  so  unconcerned  about  the 
dignity  of  the  calling  as  is  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who 
assigns  to  the  minstrels  of  his  tales  a  subordinate  so- 
cial position  that  would  make  the  average  bard  de- 
picted in  literature  gnash  his  teeth  for  rage,  and  who 
casually  disposes  of  the  poet's  immortality : 

Let  but  the  verse  befit  a  hero's  fame ; 
Immortal  be  the  verse,  forgot  the  author's  name.^ 

^  See  Emerson,  In  a  Dull  Uncertain  Brain;  Whittier,  To  my 
Namesake ;  Sidney  Lanier,  Ark  of  the  Future;  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  The  Last  Reader;  Bayard  Taylor,  L'Envoi;  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  To  Dr.  Hake;  Francis  Thompson,  To  My 
Godchild. 

'  Epistle  to  Lapraik. 

*  Introduction  to  Don  Roderick. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  19 

Mrs.  Browning-,  to  be  sure,  also  tries  to  prick  the 
bubble  of  the  poet's  conceit,  assuring  him : 

Ye  are  not  great  because  creation  drew 
Large  revelations  round  your  earliest  sense, 
Nor  bright  because  God's  glory  shines  for  you.^ 

But  in  her  other  poetry,  notably  in  Aurora  Leigh 
and  A  Vision  of  Poets,  she  amply  avows  her  sense 
of  the  preeminence  of  the  singer,  as  well  as  of  his 
song. 

While  it  is  easy  to  shake  our  heads  over  the  self- 
importance  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  to  con- 
trast it  with  the  unconscious  lyrical  spontaneity  of 
half-mythical  singers  in  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
it  is  probable  that  some  degree  of  egotism  is  es- 
sential to  a  poet.  Remembering  his  statement  that 
his  name  was  WTitten  in  water,  we  are  likely  to  think 
of  Keats  as  the  humblest  of  geniuses,  yet  he  wrote 
to  a  friend,  "You  will  observe  at  the  end  of  this, 
'How  a  solitary  life  engenders  pride  and  egotism !' 
True — I  know  it  does:  but  this  pride  and  egotism 
will  enable  me  to  write  finer  things  than  anything 
else  could,  so  I  will  indulge  it."  -  No  matter  how 
modest  one  may  be  about  his  w^ork  after  it  is  com- 
pleted, a  sense  of  its  worth  must  be  with  one  at  the 
time  of  composition,  else  he  will  not  go  to  the 
trouble  of  recording  and  preserving  it. 

Unless  the  writer  schools  himself  to  keep  this 
conviction  out  of  his  verse,  it  is  likely  to  flower  in 

*  Mountaineer  and  Poet. 

*  Letter  to  John  Taylor,  August  23,  1819. 


20  The  Poet's  Poet 

self-confident  poetry  of  the  classic  type,  so  char- 
acteristic of  the  Elizabethan  age.  This  has  such  a 
long  tradition  behind  it  that  it  seems  almost  stereo- 
typed, wherever  it  appears  in  our  period,  especially 
when  it  is  promising  immortality  to  a  beloved  one. 
We  scarcely  heed  such  verses  as  the  lines  by  Landor, 

Well  I  remember  how  you  smiled 
To  see  me  write  your  name  upon 
The  soft  sea-sand,  "O !  what  a  child, 
You  think  you're  writing  upon  stone !" 
I  have  since  written  what  no  tide 
Shall  ever  wash  away,  what  men 
Unborn  shall  read,  o'er  ocean  wide. 
And  find  lanthe's  name  again, 

or  Francis  Thompson's  sonnet  sequence.  Ad  Amicam, 
which  expresses  the  author's  purpose  to 

Fling  a  bold  stave  to  the  old  bald  Time, 

Telling  him  that  he  is  too  insolent 

Who  thinks  to  rase  thee  from  my  heart  or  rhyme, 

Whereof  to  one  because  thou  life  hast  given. 

The  other  yet  shall  give  a  life  to  thee, 

Such  as  to  gain,  the  prowest  swords  have  striven, 

And  compassed  weaker  immortality, 

or  Yeats'  lines  Of  Those  Who  Have  Spoken  Evil  of 
His  Beloved,  wherein  he  takes  pride  in  the  reflec- 
tion: 

Weigh  this  song  with  the  great  and  their  pride ; 

I  made  it  out  of  a  mouthful  of  air ; 

Their  children's  children  shall  say  they  have  lied. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  21 

But  a  more  vibrantly  personal  note  breaks  out 
from  time  to  time  in  the  most  original  verse  of  the 
last  century,  as  in  Wordsworth's  testimony, 

Yet  to  me  I  feel 
That  an  internal  brightness  is  vouchsafed 
That  must  not  die,^ 

or  in  Walt  Whitman's  injunction : 

Recorders  ages  hence, 

Come,  I  will  take  you  down  underneath  this  impassive 

Exterior.    I  will  tell  you  what  to  say  of  me.^ 

Nowadays,  in  fact,  even  minor  poets  for  the  most 
part  frankly  avow  the  importance  of  their  works. 
We  find  George  Edward  Woodberry  in  the  clutches 
of  the  old-fashioned  habit  of  apology,  to  be  sure,^ — 
perhaps  this  is  one  reason  the  radicals  are  so  op- 
posed to  him ;  but  in  the  ranks  of  the  radicals  them- 
selves we  find  very  few  retaining  any  doubt  of  them- 
selves.^ Self-assertion  is  especially  characteristic  of 
their  self-appointed  leader,  Ezra  Pound,  in  whose 
case  it  is  undoubtedly  an  inheritance  from  Walt 
Whitman,  whom  he  has  lately  acknowledged  as  his 
"pig-headed  father."  •''*  A  typical  assertion  is  that  in 
Salutation  the  Second, 

How  many  will  come  after  me. 
Singing  as  well  as  I  sing,  none  better. 

*  Home  at  Grasmere. 

*  See  also,  Long  Long  Hence. 

*  See   My   Country. 

*  Exceptions  are  Jessie  Rittenhouse,  Patrius;  Lawrence 
Houseman,  Mendicant  Rhymes;  Robert  Silliman  Hillyer,  Poor 
Faltering  Rhymes. 

"Lustra. 


22  The  Poet's  Poet 

There  is  a  delicate  charm  in  the  self-assurance  ap- 
pearing in  some  of  the  present  verse,  as  Sara  Teas- 
dale's  confidence  in  her  "fragile  immortality"  ^  or 
James  Stephens'  exultation  in  A  Tune  Upon  a  Reed, 

Not  a  piper  can  succeed 
When  I  lean  against  a  tree, 
Blowing  gently  on  a  reed, 

and  in  The  Rivals,  where  he  boasts  over  a  bird, 

I  was  singing  all  the  time. 
Just  as  prettily  as  he. 
About  the  dew  upon  the  lawn. 
And  the  wind  upon  the  lea ; 
So  I  didn't  listen  to  him 
As  he  sang  upon  a  tree. 

If  one  were  concerned  only  with  this  "not  marble 
nor  the  gilded  monuments"  theme,  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury would  quite  eclipse  the  nineteenth  or  twentieth. 
But  the  egoism  of  our  writers  goes  much  further 
than  this  parental  satisfaction  in  their  offspring.  It 
seems  to  have  needed  the  intense  individualism  of 
Rousseau's  philosophy,  and  of  German  idealism, 
especially  the  conception  of  "irony,"  or  the  superi- 
ority of  the  soul  over  its  creations,  to  bring  the 
poet's  egoism  to  flower.  Its  rankest  blossoming,  in 
Walt  Whitman,  would  be  hard  to  imagine  in  another 
century.  Try  to  conceive  even  an  Elizabethan  be- 
ginning a  poem  after  the  fashion  of  A  Song  of  My- 
self: 

*  Refuge. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  23 

I,  now  thirty-seven  years  old,  in  perfect  health,  begin, 
Hoping  to  cease  not  till  death. 

Whitman  is  conscious  of — perhaps  even  exagger- 
ates— the  novelty  of  his  task, 

Pressing  the  pulse  of  the  life  that  has  seldom  exhibited 

itself  (the  great  pride  of  man  in  himself) 
Chanter  of  personality. 

While  our  poets  thus  assert,  occasionally,  that  the 
unblushing  nudity  of  their  pride  is  a  conscious  de- 
parture from  convention,  they  would  not  have  us 
believe  that  they  are  fundamentally  different  from 
older  singers.  One  seldom  finds  an  actual  poet,  of 
whatever  period,  depicted  in  the  verse  of  the  last 
century,  whose  pride  is  not  insisted  upon.  The  fav- 
orite poet-heroes,  ^Eschylus,  Michael  Angelo,  Tasso, 
Dante,  Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Chatterton, 
Keats,  Byron,  are  all  characterized  as  proud.  The 
last-named  has  been  especially  kept  in  the  foreground 
by  following  verse-writers,  as  a  precedent  for  their 
arrogance.  Shelley's  characterization  of  Byron  in 
Julian  and  Maddalo, 

The  sense  that  he  was  greater  than  his  kind 
Had  struck,  methinks,  his  eagle  spirit  blind 
By  gazing  on  its  own  exceeding  light, 

has  been  followed  by  many  expressions  of  the  same 
thought,  at  first  wholly  sympathetic,  lately,  it  must 
be  confessed,  somewhat  ironical. 

Consciousness  of  partnership  with  God  in  com- 


24  The  Poet's  Poet 

position  naturally  lifts  the  poet,  in  his  own  estima- 
tion, at  least,  to  a  super-human  level.  The  myth 
of  Apollo  disguised  as  a  shepherd  strikes  him  as 
being  a  happy  expression  of  his  divinity.^  Thus 
Emerson  calls  singers 

Blessed  gods  in  servile  masks.^ 

The  hero  of  John  Davidson's  Ballad  in  Blank  Verse 
on  the  Making  of  a  Poet  soars  to  a  monotheistic 
conception  of  his  powers,  asserting 

Henceforth  I  shall  be  God,  for  consciousness 
Is  God.    I  suffer.    I  am  God. 

Another  poet-hero  is  characterized : 

He  would  reach  the  source  of  light, 

And  share,  enthroned,  the  Almighty's  might.^ 

On  the  other  hand,  recent  poets'  hatred  of  ortho- 
dox religion  has  led  them  to  idealize  the  Evil  One, 
and  regard  him  as  no  unworthy  rival  as  regards 
pride.  One  of  Browning's  poets  is  "prouder  than  the 
devil."  ^  Chatterton,  according  to  Rossetti,  was 
"kin  to  Milton  through  his  Satan's  pride."  ^  Of  an- 
other poet-hero  one  of  his  friends  declares, 

You  would  be  arrogant,  boy,  you  know,  in  hell, 
And  keep  the  lowest  circle  to  yourself.^ 

*  See  James  Russell  Lowell,  The  Shepherd  of  King  Admetus. 
'  Saadi. 

'Harvey  Rice,  The  Visionary  (1864).  In  recent  years  a 
few  poets  have  modestly  disclaimed  equality  with  God.  See 
William  Rose  Benet,  Imagination,  and  Joyce  Kilmer,  Trees. 
The  kinship  of  poets  and  the  Almighty  is  the  theme  of  The 
Lonely  Poet   (1919),  by  John  Hall  Wheelock. 

*  Waring. 

'  Sonnet,  To  Chatterton. 

•Josephine  Preston  Peabody,  Marlowe  (1911). 


The  Egocentric  Circle  25 

There  is  bathos,  after  these  claims,  in  the  concern 
some  poets  show  over  the  question  of  priority  be- 
tween themselves  and  kings.  Yet  one  writer  takes 
the  trouble  to  declare. 

Artists  truly  great 
Are  on  a  par  with  kings,  nor  would  exchange 
Their  fate  for  that  of  any  potentate.^ 

Stephen  Phillips  is  unique  in  his  disposition  to  ridi- 
cule such  an  attitude;  in  his  drama  on  Nero,  he 
causes  this  poet,  self-styled,  to  say, 

Think  not.  although  my  aim  is  art, 
I  cannot  toy  with  empire  easily.^ 

Not  a  little  American  verse  is  taken  up  with  this 
question,^  betraying  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the 
authors  to  follow  Walt  Whitman's  example  and 
"take  off  their  hats  to  nothing  known  or  unknown."  "* 
In  these  days,  when  the  idlest  man  of  the  street  cor- 
ner would  fight  at  the  drop  of  a  hat,  if  his  inferiority 
to  earth's  potentates  were  suggested  to  him,  all  the 
excitement  seems  absurdly  antiquated.  There  is, 
however,  something  approaching  modernity  in  By- 
ron's disposal  of  the  question,  as  he  makes  the  hero 
of  The  Lament  of  Tasso  express  the  pacifist  senti- 
ment, 

No ! — still  too  proud  to  be  vindictive,  I 

Have  pardoned  princes'  insults,  and  would  die. 

*  Longfellow,  Michael  Angela. 
'Nero. 

*  See    Helen    Hunt    Jackson,    The    King's    Singer;    E.    L. 
Sprague,  A  Shakespeare  Ode;  Eugene  Field,  Poet  and  King. 

*Walt  Whitman,  Collect. 


26  The  Poet's  Poet 

It  is  clear  that  his  creations  are  the  origin  of  the 
poet's  pride,  yet,  singularly  enough,  his  arrogance 
sometimes  reaches  such  proportions  that  he  grows 
ashamed  of  his  art  as  unworthy  of  him.  Of  course 
this  attitude  harks  back  to  Shakespeare's  sonnets. 
The  humiliation  which  Shakespeare  endured  because 
his  calling  was  despised  by  his  aristocratic  young 
friend  is  largely  the  theme  of  a  poem,  Ben  Jon- 
son  Entertains  a  Man  from  Stratford,  by  Edwin 
Arlington  Robinson.  Such  a  sense  of  shame  seems 
to  be  back  of  the  dilettante  artist,  wherever  he  ap- 
pears in  verse.  The  heroes  of  Byron's  and  Praed's 
poems  generally  refuse  to  take  their  art  seriously.^ 
A  few  of  Tennyson's  characters  take  the  same  atti- 
tude.^ Again  and  again  Byron  gives  indication  that 
his  own  feeling  is  that  imputed  to  him  by  a  later 
poet: 

He,  from  above  descending,  stooped  to  touch 

The  loftiest  thought;  and  proudly  stooped,  as  though 

It  scarce  deserved  his  verse.^ 

After  Byron's  vogue  died  out,  this  mood  slept  for 
a  time.  It  is  only  of  late  years  that  it  is  showing 
symptoms  of/waking.     It  harries  Cale  Young  Rice : 

I  have  felt  the  ineffable  sting 

Of  life,  though  I  be  art's  valet. 

I  have  painted  the  cloud  and  the  clod, 

Who  should  have  possessed  the  earth.* 

*See  W.  M.  Praed,  Lillian,  How  to  Rhyme  for  Love.  The 
Talented  Man;  Byron,  Childe  Harold,  Don  Juan. 
'  See  Eleanor,  in  Becket;  and  the  Count,  in  The  Falcon. 

*  Robert  Pollock,  The  Course  of  Time. 

*  Limitations. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  27 

It  depressed  Alan  Seeger: 

I,  who,  conceived  beneath  another  star, 
Had  been  a  prince  and  played  with  life, 
Have  been  its  slave,  an  outcast  exiled  far 
From  the  fair  things  my  faith  has  merited.^ 

It  characteristically  stings  Ezra  Pound  to  expletive : 

Great  God !  if  we  be  damned  to  be  not  men  but  only 

dreams, 
Then  let  us  be  such  dreams  the  world  shall  tremble  at, 
And  know  we  be  its  rulers,  though  but  dreams.^ 

Perhaps,  indeed,  judging  from  contemporary  ten- 
dencies, this  study  is  made  too  early  to  reflect  the 
poet's  egoism  at  its  full  tide. 

The  poet's  overweening  self-esteem  may  well  be 
the  hothouse  atmosphere  in  which  alone  his  genius 
can  thrive,  but  from  another  point  of  view  it  seems 
a  subtle  poison  gas,  engendering  all  the  ills  that  dif- 
ferentiate him  from  other  men.  Its  first  effect  is 
likely  to  be  the  reflection  that  his  genius  is  judged 
by  a  public  that  is  vastly  inferior  to  him.  This 
galling  thought  usually  drives  him  into  an  attitude 
of  indifference  or  of  openly  expressed  contempt  for 
his  audience.  The  mood  is  apparent  at  the  very  be- 
ginning of  the  romantic  period.  The  germ  of  such 
a  feeling  is  to  be  found  even  in  so  modest  a  poet 
as  Cowper,  who  maintains  that  his  brother  poets, 
rather  than  the  unliterary  public,  should  pass  upon 
his  worth. ^     But  the  average  poet  of  the  last  cen- 

*  Liebestod. 

'  Revolt  Agahtst  the  Crepuscular  Spirit  in  Modern  Poetry. 

*  See  To  Darwin. 


28  The  Poet's  Poet 

tury  and  a  half  goes  a  step  beyond  this  attitude,  and 
appears  to  feel  that  there  is  something  contemptible 
about  popularity.  Literary  arrogance  seems  far 
from  characteristic  of  Burns,  yet  he  tells  us  how, 
in  a  mood  of  discouragement, 

I  backward  mused  on  wasted  time. 
How  I  had  spent  my  youthful  prime, 
And  done  naething 
But  stringin'  blithers  up  in  rhyme 
For  fools  to  sing.^ 

Of  course  it  is  not  till  we  come  to  Byron  that 
we  meet  the  most  thoroughgoing  expression  of  this 
contempt  for  the  public.  The  sentiment  in  Childe 
Harold  is  one  that  Byron  never  tires  of  harping  on : 

I  have  not  loved  the  world,  nor  the  world  me ; 
I  have  not  flattered  its  rank  breath,  nor  bowed 
To  its  idolatries  a  patient  knee. 

And  this  attitude  of  Byron's  has  been  adopted  by  all 
his  disciples,  who  delight  in  picturing  his  scorn : 

With  terror  now  he  froze  the  cowering  blood, 
And  now  dissolved  the  heart  in  tenderness, 
Yet  would  not  tremble,  would  not  weep,  himself, 
But  back  into  his  soul  retired  alone. 
Dark,  sullen,  proud,  gazing  contemptuously 
On  hearts  and  passions  prostrate  at  his  feet.^ 

Of  the  other  romantic  poets.  Sir  Walter  Scott  alone 
remains  on  good  terms  with  the  public,  expressing 
a  child's  surprise  and  delight  over  the  substantial 

*  The  Vision. 

*  Robert  Pollock,  The  Course  of  Time. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  29 

checks  he  is  given  in  exchange  for  his  imaginings. 
But  Shelley  starts  out  with  a  chip  on  his  shoulder, 
in  the  very  advertisements  of  his  poems  expressing 
his  unflattering  opinion  of  the  public's  judgment, 
and  Keats  makes  it  plain  that  his  own  criticisms  con- 
cern him  far  more  than  those  of  other  men. 

The  consciously  aristocratic,  sniffing  attitude  to- 
ward the  public,  which  ran  its  course  during  Vic- 
toria's reign,  is  ushered  in  by  Landor,  who  con- 
fesses, 

I  know  not  whether  I  am  proud. 
But  this  I  know,  I  hate  the  crowd, 
Therefore  pray  let  me  disengage 
My  verses  from  the  motley  page, 
Where  others,  far  more  sure  to  please 
Pour  forth  their  choral  song  with  ease. 

The  same  gentlemanly  indiflFerence  to  his  plebeian 
readers  is  diflFused  all  through  Matthew  Arnold's 
writing,  of  course.  He  casually  disposes  of  popu- 
larity : 

Some  secrets  may  the  poet  tell 
For  the  world  loves  new  ways ; 

To  tell  too  deep  ones  is  not  well, — 
It  knows  not  what  he  says.^ 

Mrs.  Browning  probably  has  her  own  success  in 
mind  when  she  makes  the  young  poetess,  Aurora 
Leigh,  recoil  from  the  fulsome  praise  of  her  read- 
ers. Browning  takes  the  same  attitude  in  Sordello, 
contrasting  Eglamor,  the  versifier  who  servilely  con- 
*  See  In  Memory  of  Obermann. 


30  The  Poet's  Poet 

formed  to  the  taste  of  the  mob,  with  Sordello,  the 
true  poet,  who  despised  it.  In  Popularity,  Brown- 
ing returns  to  the  same  theme,  of  the  pubHc's  mis- 
placed praises,  and  in  Pacchiarotto  he  outdoes  him- 
self in  heaping  ridicule  upon  his  readers.  Naturally 
the  coterie  of  later  poets  who  have  prided  them- 
selves on  their  unique  skill  in  interpreting  Brown- 
ing have  been  impressed  by  his  contempt  for  his 
readers.  Perhaps  they  have  even  exaggerated  it. 
No  less  contemptuous  of  his  readers  than  Browning 
was  that  other  Victorian,  so  like  him  in  many  re- 
spects, George  Meredith. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  make  a  list  of  the  zo- 
ological metaphors  by  which  the  Victorians  expressed 
their  contempt  for  the  public.  Landor  characterized 
their  criticisms  as  "asses'  kicks  aimed  at  his  head."  ^ 
Browning  alternately  represented  his  pubHc  cack- 
ling and  barking  at  him.^  George  Meredith  made 
a  dichotomy  of  his  readers  into  "summer  flies"  and 
"swinish  grunters."  ^  Tennyson,  being  no  naturalist, 
simply  named  the  public  the  "many-headed  beast."  * 

In  America  there  has  been  less  of  this  sort  of  thing 
openly  expressed  by  genuine  poets.  Emerson  is 
fairly  outspoken,  telling  us,  in  The  Poet,  how  the 
public  gapes  and  jeers  at  a  new  vision.  But  one 
must  go  to  our  border-line  poets  to  find  the  feel- 
ing most  candidly  put  into  words.  Most  of  them 
spurn  popularity,  asserting  that  they  are  too  worth 

^  Edmund  Gosse,  Life  of  Simnburne ,  p.  103. 

*  See  Thomas  J.  Wise,  Letters,  Second  Series,  Vol.  2,  p.  52. 

*  My  Theme. 

*  In  Menporiant. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  31 

while  to  be  appreciated.  They  may  be  even  nau- 
seated by  the  sHght  success  they  manage  to  achieve, 
and  exclaim, 

Yet  to  know 
That  we  create  an  Eden  for  base  worms  ! 

If  the  consciousness  of  recent  writers  is  dominated 
by  contempt  for  mankind  at  large,  such  a  mood  is 
expressed  with  more  caution  than  formerly.  Kip- 
ling takes  men's  stupidity  philosophically.^  Edgar 
Lee  Masters  uses  a  fictional  character  as  a  mask  for 
his  remarks  on  the  subject.^  Other  poets  have  ex- 
pressed themselves  with  a  degree  of  mildness.^  But 
of  course  Ezra  Pound  is  not  to  be  suppressed.  He 
inquires, 

Will  people  accept  them? 

(i.e.,  these  songs) 
As  a  timorous  wench  from  a  centaur 

(or  a  centurion) 
Already  they  flee,  howling  in  terror 

•  ••••«•• 

Will  they  be  touched  with  the  verisimilitude  ? 
Their  virgin  stupidity  is  untemptable. 

He  adds, 

I  beg  you,  my  friendly  critics, 

Do  not  set  about  to  procure  me  an  audience. 

*  See  The  Story  of  Ung. 

*  See  Having  His  Way. 

'See  Watts-Dunton,  Apollo  in  Paris;  James  Stephens,  The 
Market;  Henry  Newbolt,  An  Essay  in  Criticism;  William 
Rose  Benet,  People. 


;^2  The  Poet's  Poet 

Again  he  instructs  his  poems,  when  they  meet  the 
public, 

Salute  them  with  your  thumbs  to  your  noses. 

It  is  very  curious,  after  such  passages,  to  find  him 
pleading,   in  another  poem, 

May  my  poems  be  printed  this  week? 

The  naivete  of  this  last  question  brings  up  in- 
sistently a  perplexing  problem.  If  the  poet  despises 
his  readers,  why  does  he  write?  He  may  perhaps 
evade  this  question  by  protesting,  with  Tennyson, 

I  pipe  but  as  the  linnets  do. 
And  sing  because  I  must. 

But  why  does  he  publish?  If  he  were  strictly  logi- 
cal, surely  he  would  do  as  the  artist  in  Browning's 
Pictor  IgnoHis,  who  so  shrank  from  having  his  pic- 
tures come  into  contact  with  fools,  that  he  painted 
upon  hidden,  moldering  walls,  thus  renouncing  all 
possibility  of  fame.  But  one  doubts  whether  such 
renunciation  has  been  made  often,  especially  in  the 
field  of  poetry.  Rossetti  buried  his  poems,  of  course, 
but  their  resurrection  was  not  postponed  till  the 
Last  Judgment.  Other  writers  have  coyly  waved 
fame  away,  but  have  gracefully  yielded  to  their 
friends'  importunities,  and  have  given  their  works 
to  the  world.  When  one  reads  such  expressions  as 
Byron's : 


The  Egocentric  Circle  33 

Fame  is  the  thirst  of  youth, — but  I  am  not 
So  young  as  to  regard  men's  frown  or  smile 
As  loss  or  guerdon  of  a  glorious  lot,^ 

one  wonders.  Perhaps  the  highest  genius  takes  ab- 
solutely no  account  of  fame,  as  the  sun-god  asserts 
in  Watts-Dunton's  poem,  Apollo  in  Paris: 

I  love  the  song-born  poet,  for  that  he 
Loves  only  song — seeks  for  love's  sake  alone 
Shy  Poesie,  whose  dearest  bowers,  unknown 
To  feudaries  of  fame,  are  known  to  thee.- 

But  other  poets,  with  the  utmost  inconsistency,  have 
admitted  that  they  find  the  thought  of  fame  very 
sweet. ^  Keats  dwells  upon  the  thought  of  it.* 
Browning  shows  both  of  his  poet  heroes  concerned 
over  the  question.    In  Pauline  the  speaker  confesses, 

I  ne'er  sing 
But  as  one  entering  bright  halls,  where  all 
Will  rise  and  shout  for  him. 

In  Sordello,  again,  Browning  analyzes  the  desire 
for  fame : 

Souls  like  Sordello,  on  the  contrary. 
Coerced  and  put  to  shame,  retaining  will. 
Care  little,  take  my.sterious  comfort  still. 
But  look  forth  tremblingly  to  ascertain 

\ChUde   Harold. 

'  See  also  Coventry  Patmore,  from  The  Angel  in  the 
House,  "I  will  not  Hearken  Blame  or  Praise" ;  Francis  Carlin, 
The  Home  Song   (1918). 

*See  Edward  Young,  Love  of  Fame;  John  Clare,  Song's 
Eternity,  Idle  Fame,  To  John  Milton;  Bulwer  Lytton,  the 
Desire  of  Fame:  James  Gates  Percival,  Sonnet  379;  Josephine 
Preston   Peabody.  Marlowe. 

*See  the  Epistle  to  My  Brother  George. 


34  The  Poet's  Poet 

If  others  judge  their  claims  not  urged  in  vain, 
And  say  for  them  their  stifled  thoughts  aloud. 
So  they  must  ever  live  before  a  crowd: 
— "Vanity,"  Naddo  tells  you. 

Emerson's  Saadi  is  one  who  does  not  despise  fame, 

Nor  can  dispense 
With  Persia  for  an  audience.^ 

Can  it  be  that  when  the  poet  renounces  fame,  we 
must  concur  with  Austin  Dobson's  paraphrase  of 
his  meaning, 

But  most,  because  the  grapes  are  sour. 
Farewell,  renown  ?  ^ 

Perhaps  the  poet  is  saved  from  inconsistency  by 
his  touching  confidence  that  in  other  times  and  places 
human  nature  is  less  stupid  and  unappreciative  than 
it  proves  itself  in  his  immediate  audience.  He  rea- 
sons that  in  times  past  the  public  has  shown  suffi- 
cient insight  to  establish  the  reputation  of  the 
master  poets,  and  that  history  will  repeat  itself.  Sev- 
eral writers  have  stated  explicitly  that  their  quar- 
rel with  humanity  is  not  to  be  carried  beyond  the 
present  generation.  Thus  Arnold  objects  to  his  time 
because  it  is  aesthetically  dead.^  But  elsewhere  he 
objects  because  it  shows  signs  of  coming  to  life,^ 
so  it  is  hard  to  determine  how  our  grandfathers 
could  have  pleased  him.     Similarly  unreasonable  dis- 

'  Saadi. 

^  Farewell  Renown. 

'  See  Persistency  of  Poetry. 
*  See  Bacchanalia. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  35 

content  has  been  expressed  by  later  poets  with  our 
own  time.^  Only  occasionally  a  poet  rebukes  his 
brethren  for  this  carping  attitude.  Mrs.  Browning 
protests,  in  Aurora  Leigh, 

'Tis  ever  thus 
With  times  we  live  in, — evermore  too  great 
To  be  apprehended  near.     .     .     . 
I  do  distrust  the  poet  who  discerns 
No  character  or  glory  in  his  times, 
And  trundles  back  his  soul  five  hundred  years. ^ 

And  Kipling  is  a  notorious  defender  of  the  present 
generation,  but  these  two  stand  almost  alone. ^ 

Several  mythical  explanations  for  the  stupidity 
of  the  poet's  own  times  have  been  offered  in  verse. 
Browning  says  that  poetry  is  like  wine;  it  must  age 
before  it  grows  sweet.'*  Emerson  says  the  poet's 
generation  is  deafened  by  the  thunder  of  his  voice.^ 
A  minor  writer  says  that  poetry  must  be  written  in 
one's  life-blood,  so  that  it  necessarily  kills  one  be- 
fore it  is  appreciated."  Another  suggests  that  a 
subtle  electric  change  is  worked  in  one's  poems  by 
death. '^  But  the  only  reasonable  explanation  of  the 
failure  of  the  poet's  own  generation  to  appreciate 

*  See  William  Ernest  Henley,  The  Gods  are  Dead:  Edmund 
Gosse,  On  Certain  Critics;  Samuel  Waddington,  The  Death 
of  Song;  John  Payne,  Double  Ballad  of  the  Singers  of  the 
Time   (1906). 

'  See  Robert  Browning,  Letter  to  Elizabeth  Barrett,  March 
12,  1845. 

*  See  also  James  Elroy  Flecker,  Oak  and  Olive;  Max  Ehr- 
mann, Give  Me  Today. 

*  Epilogue  to  the  Pacchiarotto  Volume. 
^Solution. 

•William  Reed  Dunroy,  Tlie  Way  of  the  World  (1897). 
'  Richard  Gilder,  A  Poet's  Question. 


36  The  Poet's  Poet 

him  seems  to  be  that  offered  by  Shelley,  in  the  De- 
fense of  Poetry: 

No  living  poet  ever  arrived  at  the  fullness  of  his 
fame;  the  jury  which  sits  in  judgment  upon  a  poet, 
belonging  as  he  does  to  all  time,  must  be  composed  of 
his  peers. 

Of  course  the  contempt  of  the  average  poet  for 
his  contemporaries  is  not  the  sort  of  thing  to  en- 
dear him  to  them.  Their  self-respect  almost  forces 
them  to  ignore  the  poet's  talents.  And  unfortu- 
nately, in  addition  to  taking  a  top-lofty  attitude,  the 
poet  has,  until  recently,  gone  much  farther,  and  while 
despising  the  public  has  tried  to  improve  it.  Most 
nineteenth  century  poetry  might  be  described  in 
Mrs.  Browning's  words,  as 

Antidotes 
Of  medicated  music,  ansvi^ering  for 
Mankind's  forlornest  uses.^ 

And  like  an  unruly  child  the  public  struggled  against 
the  dose.  Whereupon  the  poet  was  likely  to  lose 
his  temper,  and  declare,  as  Browning  did. 

My  Thirty-four  Port,  no  need  to  waste 
On  a  tongue  that's  fur,  and  a  palate — paste! 
A  magnum  for  friends  who  are  sound :  the  sick — 
I'll  posset  and  cosset  them,  nothing  loath, 
Henceforward  with  nettle-broth.^ 

Yes,  much  as  we  pity  the   forlorn  poet  when  his 

sensitive   feelings  are  hurt  by  the  world's  cruelty, 

^Sonnets  from   the  Portuguese. 

*  Epilogue  to  the  Pacchiarotto  Volume. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  37 

we  must  still  pronounce  that  he  is  partly  to  blame. 
If  the  public  is  buzzing  around  his  head  like  a  swarm 
of  angry  hornets,  he  must  in  most  cases  admit  that 
he  has  stirred  them  up  with  a  stick. 

The  poet's  vilified  contemporaries  employ  various 
means  of  retaliating.  They  may  invite  him  to  din- 
ner, then  point  out  that  His  Omniscience  does  not 
know  how  to  manage  a  fork,  or  they  may  investigate 
his  family  tree,  and  then  cut  his  acquaintance,  or, 
most  often,  they  may  listen  to  his  fanciful  accounts 
of  reality,  then  brand  him  as  a  liar.  So  the  vicious 
circle  is  completed,  for  the  poet  is  harassed  by  this 
treatment  into  the  belief  that  he  is  the  target  for 
organized  persecution,  and  as  a  result  his  egotism 
grows  more  and  more  morbid,  and  his  contempt  for 
the   public   more    deliberately   expressed. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  period  under  discussion 
the  social  snubs  seem  to  have  rankled  most  in  the 
poet's  nature.  This  was  doubtless  a  survival  from 
the  times  of  patronage.  James  Thomson  ^  and 
Thomas  Hood  ^  both  concerned  themselves  with  the 
problem.  Kirke  White  appears  to  have  felt  that 
patronage  of  poets  was  still  a  live  issue. ^  Crabbe, 
in  a  narrative  poem,  offered  a  pathetic  picture  of  a 
young  poet  dying  of  heartbreak  because  of  the  ma- 
licious cruelty  of  the  aristocracy  toward  him,  a  farm- 
er's son.'*       Later  on  Mrs.  Browning  took  up  the 

*  See  the  Castle  of  Indolence,  Canto  II,  stanzas  XXI-III. 
See  also  To  Mr.  Thomson.  Doubtful  to  What  Patron  to 
Address  the  Poem,  by  H.  Hill. 

'  See  To  the  Late  Lord  Mayor. 

*  See  the  Ode  Addressed  to  the  Earl  of  Carlisle. 
*The  Patron. 


38  The  Poet's  Poet 

cudgels  for  the  poet,  in  Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship, 
and  upheld  the  nobility  of  the  untitled  poet  almost 
too  strenuously,  for  his  morbid  pride  makes  him  ap- 
pear by  all  odds  the  worst  snob  in  the  poem. 

The  less  dignified  contingent  of  the  public  an- 
noys the  poet  by  burlesquing  the  grandiose  manners 
and  poses  to  which  his  large  nature  easily  lends 
itself.  People  are  likely  to  question  the  poet's  pow- 
ers of  soul  because  he  forgets  to  cut  his  hair,  or  to 
fasten  his  blouse  at  the  throat.  And  of  course  there 
have  been  rhymsters  who  have  gone  over  to  the  side 
of  the  enemy,  and  who  have  made  profit  from  ex- 
hibiting their  freakishness,  after  the  manner  of  cir- 
cus monstrosities.  Thomas  Moore  sometimes  takes 
malicious  pleasure  in  thus  showing  up  the  oddities 
of  his  race.^  Later  libelers  have  been,  usually,  writ- 
ers of  no  reputation.  The  literary  squib  that  made 
most  stir  in  the  course  of  the  century  was  not  a 
poem,  but  the  novel,  The  Green  Carnation,  which 
poked  fun  at  the  mannerisms  of  the  1890  poets. ^ 
Oddly,  American  poets  betray  more  indignation  than 
English  ones  over  such  lampoons.  Longfellow 
makes  Michael  Angelo  exclaim, 

I  say  an  artist 
Who  does  not  wholly  give  himself  to  art, 
Who  has  about  him  nothing  marked  or  strange, 
But  tries  to  suit  himself  to  all  the  world 
Will  ne'er  attain  to  greatness.' 

^  See  Common  Sense  and  Genius,  and  Rhymes  by  the  Road. 
'  Gilbert  and  Sullivan's  Patience  made  an  even  greater  sen- 
sation. 
'Michael  Angelo. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  39 

Sometimes  an  American  poet  takes  the  opposite  tack, 
and  denies  that  his  conduct  differs  from  that  of 
other  men.  Thus  Richard  Watson  Gilder  insists 
that  the  poet  has  "manners  Hke  other  men"  and 
that  on  this  account  the  world  that  is  eagerly  await- 
ing the  future  poet  will  miss  him.  He  repeats  the 
world's  query : 

How  shall  we  know  him? 
Ye  shall  know  him  not, 
Till,  ended  hate  and  scorn, 
To  the  grave  he's  borne. ^ 

Whitman,  in  his  defense,  goes  farther  than  this,  and 
takes  an  original  attitude  toward  his  failure  to  keep 
step  with  other  men,  declaring 

Of  these  states  the  poet  is  the  equable  man, 
Not  in  him  but  off  him  things  are  grotesque,  eccentric, 
fail  of  their  full  returns.^ 

As  for  the  third  method  employed  by  the  public 
in  its  attacks  upon  the  poet, — that  of  making  charges 
against  his  truthfulness, — the  poet  resents  this  most 
bitterly  of  all.  Gray,  in  The  Bard,  lays  the  whole- 
sale slaughter  of  Scotch  poets  by  Edward  I,  to  their 
fearless  truth  telling.  A  number  of  later  poets  have 
written  pathetic  tales  showing  the  tragic  results  of 
the  unimaginative  public's  denial  of  the  poet's  deli- 
cate perceptions  of  truth.^ 

^  When  the  True  Poet  Comes. 

'By  Blue  Ontario's  Shore. 

'See  Jean  Ingelow,  Gladys  and  her  Island;  Helen  Hunt 
Jackson,  The  Singer's  Hills;  J.  G.  Holland.  Jacob  Hurd's 
Child. 


40  The  Poet's  Poet 

To  the  poet's  excited  imagination,  it  seems  as  if 
all  the  world  regarded  his  race  as  a  constantly  in- 
creasing swarm  of  flies,  and  had  started  in  on  a  sys- 
tematic course  of  extirpation.^     As  for  the  profes- 
sional critic,  he  becomes  an  ogre,  conceived  of  as 
eating  a  poet   for  breakfast  every  morning.     The 
new  singer  is  invariably  warned  by  his  brothers  that 
he  must  struggle   for  his  honor  and  his  very  life 
against  his  malicious  audience.     It  is  doubtful  if  we 
could  find  a  poet  of  consequence  in  the  whole  period 
who  does  not  somewhere  characterize  men  of  his 
profession  as  the  martyrs  of  beauty.-    Shelley  is  par- 
ticularly wrought  up  on  the  subject,   and   in   The 
Woodman  and  the  Nightingale  expresses  through  an 
allegory  the  murderous  designs  of  the  public. 

A  salient  example  of  more  vicarious  indignation 
is  Mrs.  Browning,  who  exposes  the  world's  heart- 
lessness  in  a  poem  called  Tfie  Seraph  and  the  Poet. 
In  A  Vision  of  Poets  she  betrays  less  indignation, 
apparently  believing  that  experience  of  undeserved 
suffering  is  essential  to  the  maturing  of  genius.  In 
this  poem  the  world's  greatest  poets  are  described : 

*  See  G.  K.  Chesterton,  More  Poets  Yet. 

'Examples  of  abstract  discussions  of  this  sort  are:  Burns, 
The    Poet's    Progress;    Keats,    Epistle    to     George    Felton 

Matthew;    Tennyson,    To    After    Reading    a    Life    and 

Letters;  Longfellow,  The  Poets;  Thomas  Buchanan  Read. 
The  Master  Poets;  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne,  Though  Dowered 
vinth  Instincts;  Henry  Timrod,  A  Vision  of  Poesy;  George 
Meredith,  Bellerophon;  S.  L.  Fairfield,  The  Last  Song  (1832)  ; 
S.  J.  Cassells,  A  Poet's  Reflections  (1851)  ;  Richard  Gilder, 
The  New  Poet;  Richard  Realf,  Advice  Gratis  (1898)  ;  James 
Whitcomb  Riley,  An  Outworn  Sappho;  Paul  Laurence  Dun- 
bar, The  Poet;  Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  The  Octopus  of  the 
Golden  Isles;  Francis  Ledwidge,   The  Coming  Poet. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  41 

Where  the  heart  of  each  should  beat, 
There  seemed  a  wound  instead  of  it, 
From  whence  the  blood  dropped  to  their  feet. 

The  young  hero  of  the  poem,  to  whom  the  vision  is 
given,  naturally  shrinks  from  the  thought  of  such 
suffering,  but  the  attendant  spirit  leads  him  on, 
nevertheless,  to  a  loathsome  pool,  where  there  are  bit- 
ter waters, 

And  toads  seen  crawling  on  his  hand. 
And  clinging  bats,  but  dimly  scanned, 
Full  in  his  face  their  wings  expand. 
A  paleness  took  the  poet's  cheek ; 
"Must  I  drink  here?"    He  seemed  to  seek 
The  lady's  will  with  utterance  meek : 
"Ay,  ay,"  she  said,  "it  so  must  be :" 
(And  this  time  she  spoke  cheerfully) 
Behooves  thee  know  world's  cruelty. 

The  modern  poet  is  able  to  bring  forward  many 
historical  names  by  which  to  substantiate  the  charges 
of  cruelty  which  he  makes  against  society.  From 
classic  Greece  he  names  ^^schylus  ^  and  Euripides.^ 
From  Latin  writers  our  poets  have  chosen  as  favor- 
ite martyr  Lucan,  "by  his  death  approved."  ^  Of 
the  great  renaissance  poets,  Shakespeare  alone  has 
usually  been  considered  exempt  from  the  general 
persecution,  though  Richard  Garnett  humorously 
represents  even  him  as  suffering  triple  punishment, — 

*  R.  C.  Robbins,  Poems  of  Personality  (1909)  ;  Cale  Young 
Rice,  Aischylus. 

'  Bulwer  Lytton,  Euripides;  Browning,  Balaustion's  Adven- 
ture; Richard  Burton,  The  First  Price. 

*  Adonais.     See  also  Robert  Bridges,  Nero. 


42  The  Poet's  Poet 

flogging,  imprisonment  and  exile, — for  his  offense 
against  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  aggravated  by  poetical 
temperament.^  Of  all  renaissance  poets  Dante  -  and 
Tasso  ^  have  received  most  attention  on  account  of 
their  wrongs.'* 

Naturally  the  adversities  which  touch  our  writers 
most  nearly  are  those  of  the  modern  English  poets. 
It  is  the  poets  of  the  romantic  movement  who  are 
thought  of  as  suffering  greatest  injustice.  Chatter- 
ton's  extreme  youth  probably  has  helped  to  incense 
many  against  the  cruelty  that  caused  his  death. ^ 
Southey  is  singled  out  by  Landor  for  especial  com- 
miseration ;  Who  Smites  the  Wounded  is  an  indig- 
nant uncovering  of  the  world's  cruelty  in  exaggerat- 
ing Southey's  faults.  Landor  insinuates  that  this 
persecution  is  extended  to  all  geniuses : 

Alas !  what  snows  are  shed 

Upon  thy  laurelled  head, 

Hurtled  by  many  cares  and  many  wrongs! 

Malignity  lets  none 

Approach  the  Delphic  throne ; 

*  See  Wnt.  Shakespeare,  Pedagogue  and  Poacher,  a  drama 
(1904). 

"  See  G.  L.  Raymond,  Dante;  Sarah  King  Wiley,  Dante  and 
Beatrice;  Rossetti,  Dante  at  Verona;  Oscar  Wilde,  Ravenna, 

'Byron,  The  Lament  of  Tasso;  Shelley,  Song  for  Tasso; 
James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  Tasso  to  Leonora. 

*  The  sufiferings  of  several  French  poets  are  commented 
upon  in  English  verse.  Sv/inburne's  poetry  on  Victor  Hugo, 
Bulwer  Lytton's  Andre  Chenier,  and  Alfred  Lang's  Gerard  de 
Nerval  come  to  mind. 

'See  Shelley,  Adonais;  Coleridge,  Monody  on  the  Death  of 
Chatterton;  Keats,  Sonnet  on  Chatterton;  James  Montgomery, 
Stanzas  on  Chatterton;  Rossetti,  Sonnet  to  Chatterton;  Ed- 
ward Dowden,  Prologue  to  Maurice  Gerothwohl's  Version  of 
Vigny's  Chatterton;  W.  A.  Percy,  To  Chatterton. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  43 

A   hundred    lane-fed   curs   bark   down    Fame's 
hundred  tongues.^ 

The  ill-treatment  of  Burns  has  had  its  measure  of 
denunciation.  The  centenary  of  his  birth  brought 
forth  a  good  deal  of  such  verse. 

Of  course  Byron's  sufferings  have  had  their  share 
of  attention,  though,  remembering  his  enormous 
popularity,  the  better  poets  have  left  to  the  more 
gullible  rhymsters  the  echo  of  his  tirades  against 
persecution."  and  have  conceived  of  the  public  as 
beaten  at  its  own  game  by  him.  Thus  Shelley  exults 
in  the  thought, 

The  Pythian  of  the  age  one  arrow  drew 

And  smiled.    The  spoilers  tempt  no  second  blow, 
They  fawn  on  the  proud  feet  that  laid  them  low.^ 

The  wrongs  of  Keats,  also,  are  not  so  much 
stressed  in  genuine  poetry  as  formerly,  and  the  fic- 
tion that  his  death  was  due  to  the  hostility  of  his 
critics  is  dying  out,  though  Shelley's  Adonais  will  go 
far  toward  giving  it  immortality.  Oscar  Wilde's 
characterization  of  Keats  as  "the  youngest  of  the 
martyrs"  "*  brings  the  tradition  down  almost  to  the 
present  in  British  verse,  but  for  the  most  part  its 
popularity  is  now  limited  to  American  rhymes.  One 
is  rather  indignant,  after  reading  Keats'  own  manly 
words  about  hostile  criticism,  to  find  a  nondescript 

'  To  Southey,  1833. 

'See  T.  H.  Chivers,  Lord  B\rons  Dying  Words  to  Ada. 
and  Byron  (1853)  ;  Charles  Soran,  Byron  (1842)  ;  E.  F.  Hoff- 
man, Byron   (1849). 

^Adonais. 

*  At  the  Grave  of  Keats. 


44  The  Poet's  Poet 

verse-writer  putting  the  puerile  self -characterization 
into  his  mouth : 

I,  the  Boy-poet,  whom  with  curse 

They  hounded  on  to  death's  untimely  doom> 

In  even  less  significant  verse  the  most  maudlin  sym- 
pathy with  Keats  is  expressed.  One  is  tempted  to 
feel  that  Keats  suffered  less  from  his  enemies  than 
from  his  admirers,  of  the  type  which  Browning  char- 
acterized as  "the  foolish  crowd  of  rushers-in  upon 
genius  .  .  .  never  content  till  they  cut  their  initials 
on  the  cheek  of  the  Medicean  Venus  to  prove  they 
worship  her."  - 

With  the  possible  exception  of  Chatterton,  the 
poet  whose  wrongs  have  raised  the  most  indignant 
storm  of  protest  is  Shelley.  Several  poets,  as  the 
young  Browning,  Francis  Thompson,  James  Thom- 
son, B.  v.,  and  Mr.  Woodberry,  have  made  a  chival- 
rous championing  of  Shelley  almost  part  of  their 
poetical  platform.  No  doubt  the  facts  of  Shelley's 
life  warrant  such  sympathy.  Then  too,  Shelley's 
sense  of  injustice,  unlike  Byron's,  is  not  such  as  to 
seem  weak  to  us,  though  it  is  so  freely  expressed 
in  his  verse.  In  addition  one  is  likely  to  feel  par- 
ticular sympathy  for  Shelley  because  the  recoil  of 
the  public  from  him  cannot  be  laid  to  his  scorn.  His 
enthusiasms  were  always  for  the  happiness  of  the 
entire  human  race,  as  well  as  for  himself.  Every- 
thing in  his  unfortunate  life  vouches  for  the  sin- 

^T.  L.  Harris,  Lyrics  of  the  Golden  Age  (1856). 
'Letter  to  Elizabeth  Barrett,  November  17,  1845. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  45 

cerity  of  his  statement,  in  the  Hymn  to  Intellectual 
Beauty: 

Never  joy  illumed  my  brow 
Unlinked  with  hope  that  thou  wouldst  free 
This  world  from  its  dark  slavery. 

Accordingly  Shelley's  injuries  seem  to  have  affected 
him  as  a  sudden  hurt  does  a  child,  with  a  sense  of 
incomprehensibility,  and  later  poets  have  rallied  to 
his  defense  as  if  he  were  actually  a  child. ^ 

The  vicariousness  of  the  nineteenth  century  poet 
in  bewailing  the  hurts  of  his  brethren  is  likely  to 
have  provoked  a  smile  in  us,  as  in  the  mourners  of 
Adonais,  at  recognizing  one 

Who  in  another's  fate  now  wept  his  own. 

Of  course  a  suppressed  personal  grudge  may  not 
always  have  been  a  factor  in  lending  warmth  to 
these  defenses.  Mrs.  Browning  is  an  ardent  advo- 
cate of  the  misunderstood  poet,  though  she  herself 
enjoyed  a  full  measure  of  popularity.  But  when 
Landor  so  warmly  champions  Southey,  and  Swin- 
burne springs  to  the  defense  of  Victor  Hugo,  one 
cannot  help  remembering  that  the  public  did  not 
show  itself  w^ildly  appreciative  of  either  of  these  de- 
fenders. So,  too,  when  Oscar  Wilde  works  himself 
up  over  the  persecutions  of  Dante,  Keats  and  Byron, 
we  are  minded  of  the  irreverent  crowds  that  followed 

*  See  E.  C.  Stedman,  Ariel;  James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  Shelley: 
Alfred  Austin,  Shelley's  Death;  Stephen  Vincent  Benet,  The 
General  Public, 


46  The  Poet's  Poet 

Wilde  and  his  lily  down  the  street.  When  the  poet 
is  too  proud  to  complain  of  his  own  wrongs  at  the 
hands  of  the  public,  it  is  easy  for  him  to  strike  in  de- 
fense of  another.  As  the  last  century  wore  on,  this 
vicarious  indignation  more  and  more  took  the  place 
of  a  personal  outcry.  Comparatively  little  has  been 
said  by  poets  since  the  romantic  period  about  their 
own  persecutions.^ 

Occasionally  a  poet  endeavors  to  placate  the  pub- 
lic by  assuming  a  pose  of  equality.  The  tradition  of 
Chaucer,  fostered  by  the  Canterbury  Tales,  is  that 
by  carefully  hiding  his  genius,  he  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing on  excellent  terms  with  his  contemporaries. 
Percy  Mackaye,  in  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims,  shows 
him  obeying  St.  Paul's  injunction  so  literally  that 
the  parson  takes  him  for  a  brother  of  the  cloth,  the 
plowman  is  surprised  that  he  can  read,  and  so  on, 
through  the  whole  social  gamut  of  the  Pilgrims.  But 
in  the  nineteenth  century  this  friendly  attitude  sel- 
dom works  out  so  well.  Walt  Whitman  flaunts 
his  ability  to  fraternize  with  the  man  of  the  street. 
But  the  American  public  has  failed  "to  absorb  him 
as  affectionately  as  he  has  absorbed  it."  ^  Emerson 
tries  to  get  on  common  ground  with  his  audience  by 
asserting  that  every  man  is  a  poet  to  some  extent, '"^ 
and  it  is  consistent  with  the  poetic  theory  of  Yeats 
that  he  makes  the  same  assertion  as  Emerson : 

^  See,  however,  Joaquin  Miller,  /  Shall  Remember,  and  Vale; 
Francis  Ledwidge,  The  Visitation  of  Peace. 
^  By  Blue  Ontario's  Shore. 
'  See  The  Enchanter. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  47 

There  cannot  be  confusion  of  sound  forgot, 
A  single  soul  that  lacks  a  sweet  crystalline  cry.^ 

But  when  the  mob  jeers  at  a  poet,  it  does  not  take 
kindly  to  his  retort,  "Poet  yourself."  Longfellow, 
J.  G.  Holland  and  James  Whitcombe  Riley  have 
been  warmly  commended  by  some  of  their  brothers  - 
for  their  promiscuous  friendliness,  but  on  the  whole 
there  is  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  public  to  snifT 
at  these  poets,  as  well  as  at  those  who  commend 
them,  because  they  make  themselves  so  common. 
One  may  deride  the  public's  inconsistency,  yet,  after 
all,  we  have  not  to  read  many  pages  of  the  "homely" 
poets  before  their  professed  ability  to  get  down  to 
the  level  of  the  "common  man"  begins  to  remind 
one  of  pre-campaign  speeches. 

There  seems  to  be  nothing  for  the  poet  to  do,  then, 
but  to  accept  the  hostility  of  the  world  philosophi- 
cally. There  are  a  few  notable  examples  of  the  poet 
even  welcoming  the  solitude  that  society  forces  upon 
him,  because  it  affords  additional  opportunity  for 
self-communion.  Everyone  is  familiar  with  Words- 
worth's insistence  that  uncompanionableness  is  es- 
sential to  the  poet.  In  the  Prelude  he  relates  how, 
from  early  childhood, 

I  was  taught  to  feel,  perhaps  too  much, 
The  self-sufficing  power  of  solitude. 

'  Pandeen. 

'See  O.  W.  Holmes,  To  Longfellow;  P.  H.  Hayne.  To 
Henry  W.  Longfellow;  T.  B.  Read,  A  Leaf  from  the  Past; 
E.  C.  Stedman,  /.  G.  H.;  P.  L.  Dunbar,  James  Whitcombe 
Riley;  J.  W.  Riley,  Rhymes  of  Ironquill. 


48  The  Poet's  Poet 

Elsewhere  he  disposes  of  the  forms  of  social  inter- 
course : 

These  all  wear  out  of  me,  like  Forms,  with  chalk 
Painted  on  rich  men's  floors,  for  one  feast  night.^ 

So  he  describes  the  poet's  character : 

He  is  retired  as  noontide  dew 
Or  fountain  in  a  noonday  grove.^ 

In  American  verse  Wordsworth's  mood  is,  of  course, 

reflected  in  Bryant,  and  it  appears  in  the  poetry  of 

most  of  Bryant's  contemporaries.  Longfellow  caused 

the  poet  to  boast  that  he  "had  no  friends,  and  needed 

none."  ^    Emerson  expressed  the  same  mood  frankly. 

He  takes  civil  leave  of  mankind : 

Think  me  not  unkind  and  rude 
That  I  walk  alone  in  grove  and  glen; 
I  go  to  the  god  of  the  wood, 
To  fetch  his  word  to  men.* 

He  points  out  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  poet : 

Men  consort  in  camp  and  town. 
But  the  poet  dwells  alone.^ 

Thus  he  works  up  to  his  climactic  statement  regard- 
ing the  amplitude  of  the  poet's  personality: 

I  have  no  brothers  and  no  peers 
And  the  dearest  interferes; 

When  I  would  spend  a  lonely  day, 
Sun  and  moon  are  in  my  way.® 

^Personal  Talk. 

*  The  Poet's  Epitaph. 
'Michael  Angela. 

*  The  Apology. 

*  Saadi. 
'The  Poet. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  49 

Although  the  poet's  egotism  would  seem  logically 
to  cause  him  to  find  his  chief  pleasure  in  undis- 
turbed communion  with  himself,  still  this  picture  of 
the  poet  delighting  in  solitude  cannot  be  said  to  fol- 
low, usually,  upon  his  banishment  from  society.  For 
the  most  part  the  poet  is  characterized  by  an  insati- 
able yearning  for  affection,  and  by  the  stupidity  and 
hostility  of  other  men  he  is  driven  into  proud  loneli- 
ness, even  while  his  heart  thirsts  for  companionship.^ 
One  of  the  most  popular  poet-heroes  of  the  last 
cent  dry,  asserting  that  he  is  in  such  an  unhappy 
situation,  yet  declares : 

For  me,  I'd  rather  live 
With  this  weak  human  heart  and  yearning  blood, 
Lonely  as  God,  than  mate  with  barren  souls. 
More  brave,  more  beautiful  than  myself  must  be 
The  man  whom  I  can  truly  call  my  friend.^ 

So  the  poet  is  limited  to  the  companionship  of  rare 
souls,  who  make  up  to  him  for  the  indifference  of  all 
the  world  beside.  Occasionally  this  compensation 
is  found  in  romantic  love,  which  flames  all  the 
brighter,  because  the  affections  that  most  people  ex- 
pend on  many  human  relationships  are  by  the  poet 
turned  upon  one  object.     Apropos  of  the  world's 

'See  John  Clare,  The  Stranger,  The  Peasant  Poet,  I  Am; 
James  Gates  Percival,  The  Bard;  Joseph  Rodman  Drake, 
Brorix  (1847)  ;  Thomas  Buchanan  Reade,  My  Heritage;  Whit- 
tier,  The  Tent  on  the  Beach;  Mrs.  Frances  Gage,  The  Song 
of  the  Dreamer  (1867);  R.  H.  Stoddard,  Utopia;  Abram  J. 
Ryan,  Poets;  Richard  H.  Dana,  The  Moss  Supplicateth  for 
th£  Poet;  Frances  Anne  Kemble,  The  Fellowship  of  Genius 
(1889)  ;  F.  S.  FHnt,  Loneliness  (1909);  Lawrence  Hope,  My 
Paramour  was  Loneliness  (1905)  ;  Sara  Teasdale,  Alone. 

*  Alexander  Smith,  A  Life  Drama. 


50  The  Poet's  Poet 

indifference  to  him,  Shelley  takes  comfort  in  the  as- 
surance of  such  communion,  saying  to  Mary, 

If  men  must  rise  and  stamp  with  fury  blind 
On  his  pure  name  who  loves  them — thou  and  I, 
Sweet  friend!  can  look  from  our  tranquillity 
Like  lamps  into  the  world's  tempestuous  night, — - 
Two  tranquil  stars,  while  clouds  are  passing  by. 
That  burn  from  year  to  year  with  inextinguished 
light.i 

But  though  passion  is  so  often  the  source  of  his 
inspiration,  the  poet's  love  affairs  are  seldom  al- 
lowed to  flourish.  The  only  alleviation  of  his  lone- 
liness must  be,  then,  in  the  friendship  of  unusually 
gifted  and  discerning  men,  usuall}f  of  his  own  calling. 
Doubtless  the  ideal  of  most  nineteenth  century  writ- 
ers would  be  such  a  jolly  fraternity  of  poets  as  Her- 
rick  has  made  immortal  by  his  Lines  to  Ben  Jonson.^ 
A  good  deal  of  nineteenth  century  verse  shows  the 
author  enviously  dwelling  upon  the  ideal  comrade- 
ship of  Elizabethan  poets."  But  multiple  friend- 
ships did  not  flourish  among  poets  of  the  last  cen- 
tury,— at  least  they  were  overhung  by  no  glamor  of 

*  Introduction  to  The  Revolt  of  Islam. 

"  The  tradition  of  the  lonely  poet  was  in  existence  even  at 
this  time,  however.     See  Ben  Jonson,  Essay  on  Donne. 

'Keats'  Lines  on  the  Mermaid  Tavern,  Browning's  At  the 
Mermaid,  Watts-Dunton's  Christmas  at  the  Mermaid,  E.  A. 
Robinson's  Ben  Jonson  Entertains  a  Man  from  Stratford, 
Josephine  Preston  Peabody's  Marlowe,  and  Alfred  Noyes' 
Tales  of  the  Mermaid  Inn  all  present  fondly  imagined 
accounts  of  the  gay  intimacy  of  the  master  dramatists.  Keats, 
who  was  so  generous  in  acknowledging  his  indebtedness  to 
contemporary  artists,  tells,  in  his  epistles,  of  the  envy  he  feels 
for  men  who  created  under  these  ideal  conditions  of  com- 
radeship. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  51 

romance  that  lured  the  poet  to  immortaHze  them  in 
verse.  The  closest  approximation  to  such  a  thing 
is  in  the  redundant  complimentary  verse,  with 
which  the  New  England  poets  showered  each  other 
to  such  an  extent  as  to  arouse  Lowell's  protest.^ 
Even  they,  however,  did  not  represent  themselves  as 
living  in  Bohemian  intimacy.  Possibly  the  tempera- 
mental jealousy  that  the  philistine  world  ascribes 
to  the  artist,  causing  him  to  feel  that  he  is  the  one 
elect  soul  sent  to  a  benighted  age,  while  his  brother- 
artists  are  akin  to  the  money-changers  in  the  temple, 
hinders  him  from  unreserved  enjoyment  even  of  his 
fellows'  society.  Tennyson's  and  Swinburne's  out- 
breaks against  contemporary  writers  appear  to  be 
based  on  some  such  assumption. - 

Consequently  the  poet  is  likely  to  celebrate  one  or 
two  deep  friendships  in  an  otherwise  lonely  life.  A 
few  instances  of  such  friendships  are  so  notable,  that 
the  reader  is  likely  to  overlook  their  rarity.  Such 
were  the  friendships  of  Wordsworth  and  Cole- 
ridge, and  of  Wordsworth  and  his  sister  Dorothy, 
also  that  recorded  in  Landor's  shaken  lines : 

Friends !  hear  the  words  my  wandering  thoughts  would 

say. 
And  cast  them  into  shape  some  other  day ; 
Southey,  my  friend  of  forty  years,  is  gone, 
And  shattered  with  the  fall,  I  stand  alone. 

'  See  A  Fable  for  Critics. 

'  See  Tennyson,  The  Nczv  Timon  and  the  Poet:  Buhver 
Lytton,  The  Nezu  Timon:  Swinburne,  Essay  on  IVhitman. 
For  more  recent  manifestation  of  the  same  attitude  see  John 
Drinkwater,  To  Alice  Mcynell  (iQii)  ;  Shaemas  O'Sheel, 
The  Poets  with  the  Sounding  Gong  (1912)  ;  Robert  Graves, 
The  Voice  of  Beauty  Drowned  (1920). 


52  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  intimacy  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  recorded  in 
Julian  and  Maddalo,  was  of  a  less  ardent  sort.  In- 
deed Byron  said  of  it,  "As  to  friendship,  it  is  a  pro- 
pensity in  which  my  genius  is  very  limited.  ...  I 
did  not  even  feel  it  for  Shelley,  however  much  I 
admired  him."  ^  Arnold's  Thyrsis,  Tennyson's  In 
Memoriam,  and  more  recently,  George  Edward 
Woodberry's  North  Shore  Watch,  indicate  that  even 
when  the  poet  has  been  able  to  find  a  human  soul 
which  understood  him,  the  friendship  has  been  cut 
short  by  death.  In  fact,  the  premature  close  of 
such  friendships  has  usually  been  the  occasion  for 
their  celebration  in  verse,  from  classic  times  onward. 
Such  friendships,  like  happy  love-affairs,  are  too 
infrequent  and  transitory  to  dissipate  the  poet's  con- 
viction that  he  is  the  loneliest  of  men.  "Thy  soul 
was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart,"  might  have  been 
written  by  almost  any  nineteenth  century  poet  about 
any  other.  Shelley,  in  particular,  in  spite  of  his  not 
infrequent  attachments,  is  almost  obsessed  by  melan- 
choly reflection  upon  his  loneliness.  In  To  a  Sky- 
lark, he  pictures  the  poet  "hidden  in  the  light  of 
thought."  Employing  the  opposite  figure  in  the  De- 
fense of  Poetry,  he  says,  "The  poet  is  a  nightingale 
who  sits  in  darkness  and  sings  to  cheer  his  own  soli- 
tude."    Of  the  poet  in  A  las  tor  we  are  told, 

He  lived,  he  died,  he  sung,  in  solitude. 

Shelley's  sense  of  his  personal  loneliness  is  recorded 
^Letter  to  Mrs.   (Shelley?)    undated. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  53 

in  Stanzas  Written  in  Dejection,  and  also  in  Adonais. 
In  the  latter  poem  he  says  of  himself, 

He  came  the  last,  neglected  and  apart, 

and  describes  himself  as 

companionless 
As  the  last  cloud  of  an  expiring  storm, 
Whose  thunder  is  its  knell. 

Victorian  poets  were  not  less  depressed  by  reflec- 
tion upon  the  poet's  lonely  life.  Arnold  strikes  the 
note  again  and  again,  most  poignantly  in  The  Buried 
Life,  of  the  poet's  sensitive  apprehension  that  all 
human  intercourse  is  mockery,  and  that  the  gifted 
soul  really  dwells  in  isolation.  Sordello  is  a  monu- 
mental record  of  a  genius  without  friends.  Francis 
Thompson,  with  surface  lightness,  tells  us,  in  A 
Renegade  Poet  on  the  Poet: 

He  alone  of  men,  though  he  travel  to  the  pit,  picks 
up  no  company  by  the  way ;  but  has  a  contrivance  to 
avoid  scripture,  and  find  a  narrow  road  to  damnation. 
Indeed,  if  the  majority  of  men  go  to  the  nether  abodes, 
'tis  the  most  hopeful  argument  I  know  of  his  salvation, 
for  'tis  inconceivable  that  he  should  ever  do  as  other 
men. 

One  might  imagine  that  in  the  end  the  poet's 
poignant  sense  of  his  isolation  might  allay  his  ex- 
cessive conceit.  A  yearning  for  something  beyond 
himself  might  lead  him  to  infer  a  lack  in  his  own 
nature.  Seldom,  however,  is  this  the  result  of  the 
poet's  loneliness.    Francis  Thompson,  indeed,  does 


54  The  Poet's  Poet 

feel  himself  humbled  by  his  spiritual  solitude,  and 
characterizes  himself, 

I  who  can  scarcely  speak  my  fellows'  speech, 
Love  their  love  or  mine  own  love  to  them  teach, 
A  bastard  barred  from  their  inheritance, 

•  ••••••• 

In  antre  of  this  lowly  body  set, 
Girt  with  a  thirsty  solitude  of  soul.^ 

But  the  typical  poet  yearns  not  downward,  but  up- 
ward, and  above  him  he  finds  nothing.  Therefore 
reflection  upon  his  loneliness  continually  draws  his 
attention  to  the  fact  that  his  isolation  is  an  inevi- 
table consequence  of  his  genius, — that  he 

Spares  but  the  cloudy  border  of  his  base 
To  the  foiled  searching  of  mortality.^ 

The  poet  usually  looks  for  alleviation  of  his  lone- 
liness after  death,  when  he  is  gathered  to  the  com- 
pany of  his  peers,  but  to  the  supreme  poet  he  feels 
that  even  this  satisfaction  is  denied.  The  highest 
genius  must  exist  absolutely  in  and  for  itself,  the 
poet-egoist  is  led  to  conclude,  for  it  will  "remain 
at  heart  unread  eternally."  ^ 

Such  is  the  self -perpetuating  principle  which  ap- 
pears to  insure  perennial  growth  of  the  poet's  egoism. 
The  mystery  of  inspiration  breeds  introspection ;  in- 
trospection breeds  egoism;  egoism  breeds  pride; 
pride  breeds  contempt  for  other  men ;  contempt  for 
other  men  breeds  hostility  and  persecution;  perse- 

*  Sister  Songs. 

'  Matthew   Arnold,   Sonnet,  Shakespeare. 

*  Thomas  Hardy,  To  Shakespeare. 


The  Egocentric  Circle  55 

cution    breeds  proud    isolation.  Finally,    isolation 

breeds  deeper  introspection,  and  the  poet  is  ready 

to  start  on  a  second  revolution  of  the  egocentric 
circle. 


II 

THE  MORTAL  COIL 

IF  I  might  dwell  where  Israfel 
Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 
A  mortal  melody, 

sighs  Poe,  and  the  envious  note  vibrates  in  much 
of  modern  song.  There  is  an  inconsistency  in 
the  poet's  attitude, — the  same  inconsistency  that 
lurks  in  the  most  poetical  of  philosophies.  Like 
Plato,  the  poet  sees  this  world  as  the  veritable  body 
of  his  love.  Beauty, — and  yet  it  is  to  him  a  muddy 
vesture  of  decay,  and  he  is  ever  panting  for  escape 
from  it  as  from  a  prison  house. 

One  might  think  that  the  poet  has  less  cause  for 
rebellion  against  the  flesh  than  have  other  men,  in- 
asmuch as  the  bonds  that  enthrall  feebler  spirits 
seem  to  have  no  power  upon  him.  A  blind  Homer, 
a  mad  Tasso,  a  derelict  Villon,  an  invalid  Pope,  most 
wonderful  of  all — a  woman  Sappho,  suggest  that 
the  differences  in  earthly  tabernacles  upon  which  most 
of  us  lay  stress  are  negligible  to  the  poet,  whose 
burning  genius  can  consume  all  fetters  of  heredity, 
sex,  health,  environment  and  material  endowment. 
Yet  in  his  soberest  moments  the  poet  is  wont  to 

56 


The  Mortal  Coil  57 

confess  that  there  are  varying  degrees  in  the  handi- 
cap which  genius  suffers  in  the  mid-earth  life;  in 
fact  ever  since  the  romantic  movement  roused  in  him 
an  intense  curiosity  as  to  his  own  nature,  he  has  re- 
flected a  good  deal  on  the  question  of  what  earthly 
conditions  will  least  cabin  and  confine  his  spirit. 

Apparently  the  problem  of  heredity  is  too  in- 
volved to  stir  him  to  attempted  solution.  If  to  make 
a  gentleman  one  must  begin  with  his  grandfather, 
surely  to  make  a  poet  one  must  begin  with  the  race, 
and  in  poems  even  of  such  bulk  as  the  Prelude  one 
does  not  find  a  complete  analysis  of  the  singer's  for- 
bears. In  only  one  case  do  we  delve  far  into  a  poet's 
heredity.  He  who  will,  may  perchance  hear  Bor- 
dello's story  told,  even  from  his  remote  ancestry, 
but  to  the  untutored  reader  the  only  clear  point 
regarding  heredity  is  the  fusion  in  Sordello  of  the 
restless  energy  and  acumen  of  his  father,  Taurello, 
with  the  refinement  and  sensibility  of  his  mother,  Re- 
trude.  This  is  a  promising  combination,  but  would 
it  necessarily  flower  in  genius?  One  doubts  it.  In 
Aurora  Leigh  one  might  speculate  similarly  about 
the  spiritual  a^stheticism  of  Aurora's  Italian  mother 
balanced  by  the  intellectual  repose  of  her  English 
father.  Doubtless  the  Brownings  were  not  working 
blindly  in  giving  their  poets  this  heredity,  yet  in 
both  characters  we  must  assume,  if  we  are  to  be 
scientific,  that  there  is  a  happy  combination  of  quali- 
ties derived   from  more  remote  ancestors. 

The  immemorial  tradition  which  Swinburne  fol- 
lowed in  giving  his  mythical  poet  the  sun  as  father 


S8     •  The  Poet's  Poet 

and  the  sea  as  mother  is  more  illuminating,^  since 
it  typifies  the  union  in  the  poet's  nature  of  the  earthly 
and  the  heavenly.  Whenever  heredity  is  lightly 
touched  upon  in  poetry  it  is  generally  indicated  that 
in  the  poet's  nature  there  are  combined,  for  the  first 
time,  these  two  powerful  strains  which,  in  mysterious 
fusion,  constitute  the  poetic  nature.  In  the  marriage 
of  his  father  and  mother,  delight  in  the  senses, 
absorption  in  the  turbulence  of  human  passions,  is 
likely  to  meet  complete  otherworldliness  and  un- 
usual spiritual  sensitiveness. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  all  great  men  have  re- 
sembled their  mothers ;  this  may  in  part  account  for 
the  fact  that  the  poet  often  writes  of  her.  Yet  in 
poetical  pictures  of  the  mother  the  reader  seldom 
finds  anything  patently  explaining  genius  in  her  child. 
The  glimpse  we  have  of  Ben  Jonson's  mother  is  an 
exception.  A  twentieth  century  poet  conceives  of 
the  woman  who  was  "no  churl"  as 

A  tall,  gaunt  woman,  with  great  burning  eyes. 
And  white  hair  blown  back  softly  from  a  face 
Etherially  fierce,  as  might  have  looked 
Cassandra  in  old  age.^ 

In  the  usual  description,  however,  there  is  none  of 
this  dynamic  force.  Womanliness,  above  all,  and 
sympathy,  poets  ascribe  to  their  mothers.^     A  little 

^  See  Thalassius. 

^Alfred  Noyes,  Tales  of  the  Mermaid  Inn. 

^  See  Beattie,  The  Minstrel;  Wordsworth,  The  Prelude; 
Cowper,  Lines  on  his  Mother's  Picture;  Swinburne,  Ode  to 
his  Mother;  J.  G.  Holland,  Kathrina;  William  Vaughan 
Moody,  The  Daguerreotype;  Anna  Hempstead  Branch,  Her 
Words. 


The  Mortal  Coil  59 

poem  by  Sara  Teasdale,  The  Mother  of  a  Poet,  gives 
a  poetical  explanation  of  this  type  of  woman,  in 
whom  all  the  turbulence  of  the  poet's  spiritual  in- 
heritance is  hushed  before  it  is  transmitted  to  him. 
Such  a  mother  as  Byron's,  while  she  appeals  to  cer- 
tain novelists  as  a  means  of  intensifying  the  poet's 
adversities,^  is  not  found  in  verse.  One  might  al- 
most conclude  that  poets  consider  their  maternal 
heritage  indispensable.  Very  seldom  is  there  such 
a  departure  from  tradition  as  making  the  father 
bequeather  of  the  poet's  sensitiveness. - 

The  inheritance  of  a  specific  literary  gift  is  almost 
never  insisted  upon  by  poets, ^  though  some  of  the 
verse  addressed  to  the  child,  Hartley  Coleridge,  pos- 
sibly implies  a  belief  in  such  heritage.  The  son  of 
Robert  and  Mrs.  Browning  seems,  strangely  enough, 
considering  his  chance  of  a  double  inheritance  of 
literary  ability,  not  to  have  been  the  subject  of  versi- 
fied prophecies  of  this  sort.  One  expression  by  a 
poet  of  belief  in  heredity  may,  however,  detain  us. 
At  the  beginning  of  Viola  Meynell's  career,  it  is  in- 
teresting to  notice  that  as  a  child  she  was  the  sub- 
ject of  speculation  as  to  her  inheritance  of  her 
mother's  genius.  It  was  Francis  Thompson,  of 
course,  who,  musing  on  Alice  Meynell's  poetry,  said 
to  the  little  Viola, 

'See  H.  E.  Rives,  The  Castaway  (1904);  J-  D.  Bacon,  A 
Fa mily  Affair  ( 1 900 ) . 

M  Ballad  in  Blank  I'crsc,  by  John  Davidson,  is  a  rare 
exception. 

'  See,  however,  Anna  Hempstead  Branch,  Her  Words. 


6o  The  Poet's  Poet 

If  angels  have  hereditary  wings, 

If  not  by  SaHc  law  is  handed  down 

The  poet's  laurel  crown, 

To  thee,  born  in  the  purple  of  the  throne, 

The  laurel  must  belong.^ 

But  these  lines  must  not  be  considered  apart  from 
the  fanciful  poem  in  which  they  grow. 

What  have  poets  to  say  on  the  larger  question  of 
their  social  inheritance?  This  is  a  subject  on  which, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  at  least, 
poets  should  have  had  ideas,  and  the  varying  rank 
given  to  their  lyrical  heroes  is  not  without  signifi- 
cance. The  renaissance  idea,  that  the  nobleman  is 
framed  to  enjoy,  rather  than  to  create,  beauty, — 
that  he  is  the  connoisseur  rather  than  the  genius, — 
seems  to  have  persisted  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  at  the  beginning  of  the  romantic  movement  to 
have  combined  with  the  new  exaltation  of  the  lower 
classes  to  work  against  the  plausible  view  that  the 
poet  is  the  exquisite  flowering  of  the  highest  line- 
age. 

Of  course,  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  there  should 
be  unanimity  of  opinion  among  poets  as  to  the  ideal 
singer's  rank.  In  several  instances,  confidence  in 
human  egotism  would  enable  the  reader  to  make  a 
shrewd  guess  as  to  a  poet's  stand  on  the  question 
of  caste,  without  the  trouble  of  investigation.  Gray, 
the  gentleman,  as  a  matter  of  course  consigns  his 
"rustic  Milton"  to  oblivion.     Lord  Byron   follows 

*  Sister  Songs. 


The  Mortal  Coil  6i 

the  fortunes  of  "Childe"  Harold.  Lord  Tennyson 
usually  deals  with  titled  artists.^  Greater  signifi- 
cance attaches  to  the  gentle  birth  of  the  two  promi- 
nent fictional  poets  of  the  century,  Sordello  and 
Aurora  Leigh,  yet  in  both  poems  the  plot  interest 
is  enough  to  account  for  it.  In  Sordello's  case, 
especially,  Taurello's  dramatic  offer  of  political  lead- 
ership to  his  son  suffices  to  justify  Browning's 
choice  of  his  hero's  rank.- 

None  of  these  instances  of  aristocratic  birth  are 
of  much  importance,  and  wherever  there  is  a  sug- 
gestion that  the  poet's  birth  represents  a  tenet  of 
the  poem's  maker,  one  finds,  naturally,  praise  of 
the  singer  who  springs  from  the  masses.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  singer's  social  origin  was  awake  in  verse 
even  before  Burns.  So  typical  an  eighteenth  cen- 
tury poet  as  John  Hughes,  in  lines  On  a  Print  of 
Tom  Burton,  a  Small  Coal  Man,  moralizes  on  the 
phenomenon  that  genius  may  enter  into  the  breast 
of  one  quite  beyond  the  social  pale,  Crabbe  ^  and 
Beattie,^  also,  seem  not  to  be  departing  from  the  Au- 
gustan tradition  in  treating  the  fortunes  of  their 
peasant  bards.  But  with  Burns,  of  course,  the  ques- 
tion comes  into  new  prominence.  Yet  he  spreads  no 
propaganda.     His  statement  is  merely  personal : 

*  See  Lord  Burleigh,  Eleanore  in  A  Becket,  and  the  Count 
in  The  Falcon. 

'  Other  poems  celebrating  noble  poets  are  The  Troubadour, 
Praed;  The  King's  Tragedy,  Rossetti;  David,  Charles  di 
Trocca,  Cale  Young  Rice. 

'See  The  Patron. 

*  Sec  The  Minstrel. 


62  The  Poet's  Poet 

Gie  me  ae  spark  of  nature's  fire! 

That's  a'  the  learning  I  desire. 

Then,  though  I  drudge  through  dub  and  mire 

At  plough  or  cart, 

My  muse,  though  homely  in  attire, 

May  touch  the  heart.^ 
It  is  not  till  later  verse  that  poets  springing  from 
the  soil  are  given  sweeping  praise,  because  of  the 
mysterious  communion  they  enjoy  with  "nature,"  ^ 
Obviously  the  doctrine  is  reinforced  by  Wordsworth, 
though  few  of  his  farmer  folk  are  geniuses,  and  the 
closest  illustration  of  his  belief  that  the  peasant, 
the  child  of  nature,  is  the  true  poet,  is  found  in  the 
character  of  the  old  pedlar,  in  the  Excursion.  The 
origin  of  Keats  might  be  assumed  to  have  its  share 
in  molding  poets'  views  on  caste,  but  only  the  most 
insensitive  have  dared  to  touch  upon  his  Cockney 
birth.  In  the  realm  of  Best  Sellers,  however,  the 
hero  of  May  Sinclair's  novel.  The  Divine  Fire,  who 
is  presumably  modeled  after  Keats,  is  a  lower  class 
Londoner,  presented  with  the  most  unflinching  real- 
ism that  the  author  can  achieve.  Consummate  in- 
deed is  the  artistry  with  which  she  enables  him  to 
keep  the  sympathy  of  his  readers,  even  while  he 
commits  the  unpardonable  sin  of  dropping  his  h's.^^ 

^  Epistle  to  Lapraik. 

"For  verse  glorifying  the  peasant  aspect  of  Burns  see 
Thomas  Campbell,  Ode  to  Burns;  Whittier,  Burns;  Joaquin 
Miller,  Burns  and  Byron;  William  Bennett,  To  the  Memory 
of  Burns;  A.  B.  Street,  Robbie  Burns  (1867)  ;  O.  W.  Holmes, 
The  Burns  Centennial;  Richard  Realf,  Burns;  Simon  Kerl, 
Burns   (1868)  ;    Shelley   Halleck,  Burns. 

*  Another  historical  poet  whose  lowly  origin  is  stressed  in 
poetry  is  Marlowe,  the  son  of  a  cobbler.  See  Alfred  Noyes, 
At  the  Sign  of  the  Golden  Shoe;  Josephine  Preston  Peabody, 
Marlowe. 


The  Mortal  Coil  63 

Here  and  there,  the  poet  from  the  ranks  lifts  his 
head  in  verse,  throughout  the  last  century.^  And 
at  present,  with  the  penetration  of  the  "realistic" 
movement  into  verse,  one  notes  a  slij^ht  revival  of 
interest  in  the  type,  probably  because  the  lower 
classes  are  popularly  conceived  to  have  more  first 
hand  acquaintance  with  sordidness  than  those  hedged 
about  by  family  tradition.-  Still,  for  the  most  part, 
the  present  attitude  of  poets  toward  the  question 
seems  to  be  one  of  indifference,  since  they  feel  that 
other  factors  are  more  important  than  caste  in  de- 
termining the  singer's  genius.  Most  writers  of  to- 
day would  probably  agree  with  the  sentiment  of  the 
lines  on  Browning, 

What  if  men  have  found 
Poor  footmen  or  rich  merchants  on  the  roll 
Of  his  forbears  ?    Did  they  beget  his  soul  ?  ' 

If  poets  have  given  us  no  adequate  body  of  data 
by  which  we  may  predict  the  birth  of  a  genius,  they 
have,  on  the  other  hand,  given  us  most  minute  de- 
scriptions whereby  we  may  recognize  the  husk  con- 
taining the  poetic  gift.  The  skeptic  may  ask.  What 
has  the  poet  to  do  with  his  body?  since  singers  tell 

*  For  poet-heroes  of  this  sort  see  John  Clare,  The  Peasant 
Poet;  Mrs.  Browning,  Lady  Geraldinc's  Courtship;  Robert 
Buchanan,  Poet  Andrciv;  T.  E.  Browne,  Tommy  Big  Eyes; 
Whittier,  Eliot;  J.  G.  Saxe,  Murillo  and  his  Slave. 

'See  John  Davidson,  A  Ballad  in  Blank  Verse;  Vachel 
Lindsay,  The  North  Star  Whispers  to  the  Blacksmith's  Son; 
John  Masefield,  Dauber;  Francis  Carhn,  MacSweeney  the 
Rhymer  (1918). 

*  Henry  van  Dyke,  Sonnet. 


64  The  Poet's  Poet 

us  so  repeatedly  that  their  souls  are  aliens  upon 
earth, 

Clothed  in  flesh  to  suffer :  maimed  of  wings  to  soar/ 

as  Swinburne  phrases  it.  Yet,  mysteriously,  the  ar- 
tist's soul  is  said  to  frame  a  tenement  for  its  brief 
imprisonment  that  approximately  expresses  it,  so 
that  it  is  only  in  the  most  beautiful  bodies  that  we 
are  to  look  for  the  soul  that  creates  beauty.  Though 
poets  of  our  time  have  not  troubled  themselves  much 
with  philosophical  explanations  of  the  phenomenon, 
they  seem  to  concur  in  the  Platonic  reasoning  of 
their   father  Spenser,  who  argues, 

So  every  spirit,  as  it  is  most  pure, 
And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 
To  habit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight 
With  cheerful  grace,  and  amiable  sight; 
For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take. 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make.^ 

What  an  absurd  test !  one  is  likely  to  exclaim,  think- 
ing of  a  swarthy  Sappho,  a  fat  Chaucer,  a  bald 
Shakespeare,  a  runt  Pope,  a  club-footed  Byron,  and 
so  on,  almost  ad  infinitum.  Would  not  a  survey 
of  notable  geniuses  rather  indicate  that  the  poet's 
dreams  arise  because  he  is  like  the  sensitive  plant 
of   Shelley's  allegory,  which 

Desires  what  it  hath  not,  the  beautiful?* 

^  The  Centenary  of  Shelley. 
'Hymn  in  Honour  of  Beauty. 
'  The  Sensitive  Plant. 


The  Mortal  Coil  65 

Spenser  himself  foresaw  our  objections  and  felt 
obliged  to  modify  his  pronouncement,  admitting — 

Yet  oft  it  falls  that  many  a  gentle  mind 
Dwells  in  deformed  tabernacle  drownd, 
Either  by  chance,  against  the  course  of  kind, 
Or  through  unaptness  of  the  substance  found, 
Which  it  assumed  of  some  stubborn  ground 
That  will  not  yield  unto  her  form's  direction, 
But  is  preformed  with  some  foul  imperfection. 

But  the  modern  poet  is  not  likely  to  yield  his  point 
so  easily  as  does  Spenser.  Rather  he  will  cast  aside 
historical  records  as  spurious,  and  insist  that  all 
genuine  poets  have  been  beautiful.  Of  the  many 
poems  on  Sappho  written  in  the  last  century,  not 
one  accepts  the  tradition  that  she  was  ill-favored, 
but  restores  a  flower-like  portrait  of  her  from 
Alcaeus'  line, 

Violet-weaving,  pure,  sweet-smiling  Sappho. 

As  for  Shakespeare,  here  follows  a  very  character- 
istic idealization  of  his  extant  portrait : 

A  pale,  plain-favored  face,  the  smile  where-of 
Is  beautiful;  the  eyes  gray,  changeful,  bright. 
Low-lidded  now,  and  luminous  as  love, 
Anon  soul-searching,  ominous  as  night. 
Seer-like,  inscrutable,  revealing  deeps 
Where-in  a  mighty  spirit  wakes  or  sleeps.^ 

The  most  unflattering  portrait  is  no  bar  to  poets' 
confidence  in  their  brother's  beauty,  yet  they  are 
happiest  when  fashioning  a  frame  for  geniuses  of 

*C.  L.  Hildreth,  At  the  Mermaid  (1889). 


66  The  Poets  Poet 

whom  we  have  no  authentic  description.  "The  love- 
dream  of  his  unrecorded  face,"  ^  has  led  to  many 
an  idealized  portrait  of  such  a  long-dead  singer. 
Marlowe  has  been  the  favorite  figure  of  this  sort 
with  which  the  fancies  of  our  poets  have  played. 
From  the  glory  and  power  of  his  dramas  their  im- 
aginations inevitably  turn  to 

The  gloriole  of  his  flame-coloured  hair, 

The  lean,  athletic  body,  deftly  planned 

To  carry  that  swift  soul  of  fire  and  air; 

The  long,  thin  flanks,  the  broad  breast,  and  the  grand 

Heroic  shoulders !  ^ 

It  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  last  century  there  has 
grown  up  so  firm  a  belief  in  the  poet's  beauty,  one 
reflects,  remembering  the  seraphic  face  of  Shelley, 
the  Greek  sensuousness  of  Keats'  profile,  the  ro- 
mantic fire  of  Byron's  expression.^  Yet  it  is  a  be- 
lief that  must  have  been  sorely  tried  since  the  in- 
vention of  the  camera  has  brought  the  verse-writ- 
er's countenance,  in  all  its  literalness,  before  the 
general  public.  Was  it  only  an  accident  that  the 
popularity  of  current  poetry  died  just  as  cameras 
came  into  existence?  How  many  a  potential  ad- 
mirer has  been  lost  by  a  glance  at  the  frontispiece 
in  a  book  of  verse!  In  recent  years,  faith  in  soul- 
made  beauty  seems  again  to  have  shown  itself  jus- 

^  Rossetti,  Sonnet  on  Chattcrton. 

^Alfred  Noyes,  At  the  Sign  of  the  Golden  Shoe. 

*  Browning  in  his  youth  must  have  encouraged  the  tradi- 
tion. See  iMacready's  Diary,  in  which  he  describes  Browning 
as  looking  "more  like  a  youthful  poet  than  any  man  I  ever 
saw." 


The  Mortal  Coil  67 

tified.  Likenesses  of  Rupert  Brooke,  with  his  "an- 
gel air,"  ^  of  Alan  Seeger,  and  of  Joyce  Kilmer  in 
his  undergraduate  days,  are  perhaps  as  beautiful  as 
any  the  romantic  period  could  afiford.  Still  the 
young  enthusiast  of  the  present  day  should  be  warned 
not  to  be  led  astray  by  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing, 
for  the  spurious  claimant  of  the  laurel  is  learning 
to  employ  all  the  devices  of  the  art  photographer  to 
obscure  and  transform  his  unaesthetic  visage. 

We  have  implied  that  insistence  upon  the  artist's 
beauty  arose  with  the  romantic  movement,  but  a 
statement  to  that  effect  w^ould  have  to  be  made  with 
reservations.  The  eigiiteenth  century  was  by  no 
means  without  such  a  conception,  as  the  satires  of 
that  period  testify,  being  full  of  allusions  to  poetas- 
ters' physical  defects,  with  the  obvious  implication 
that  they  are  indicative  of  spiritual  deformity,  and 
of  literary  sterility.  Then,  from  within  the  roman- 
tic movement  itself,  a  critic  might  exhume  verse  in- 
dicating that  faith  in  the  beautiful  singer  w^as  by 
no  means  universal; — that,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
interestingly  ugly  bard  enjoyed  considerable  vogue. 
He  would  find,  for  example,  Moore's  Lines  on  a 
Squinting  Poetess,  and  Praed's  The  Talented  Man. 
In  the  latter  verses  the  speaker  says  of  her  literary 
fancy. 

He's  hideous,  I  own  it;  but  fame,  Love, 
Is  all  that  these  eyes  can  adore. 
He's  lame, — but  Lord  Byron  was  lame,  Love, 
And  dumpy,  but  so  is  Tom  Moore. 

*  See  \V.  VV.  Gibson,  Rupert  Brooke. 


68  The  Poet's  Poet 

Still,  rightly  interpreted,  such  verse  on  poetasters  is 
quite  in  Hne  with  the  poet's  conviction  that  beauty 
and  genius  are  inseparable.  So,  likewise,  is  the 
more  recent  verse  of  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  giving 
us  the  brutal  self-portrait  of  Minerva  Jones,  the 
poetess  of  Spoon  River, 

Hooted  at,  jeered  at  by  the  Yahoos  of  the  street 
For  my  heavy  body,  cock  eye,  and  rolling  walk,^ 

for  she  is  only  a  would-be  poet,  and  the  cry,  "I 
yearned  so  for  beauty !"  of  her  spirit,  baffled  by  its 
embodiment,  is  almost  insupportable. 

Walt  Whitman  alludes  to  his  face  as  "the  heart's 
geography  map,"  and  assures  us, 

Here  the  idea,  all  in  this  mystic  handful  wrapped,^ 

but  one  needs  specific  instructions  for  interpretation 
of  the  poetic  topography  to  which  Whitman  alludes. 
What  are  the  poet's  distinguishing  features? 

Meditating  on  the  subject,  one  finds  his  irreverent 
thoughts  inevitably  wandering  to  hair,  but  in  verse 
taken  up  with  hirsute  descriptions,  there  is  a  false 
note.  It  makes  itself  felt  in  Mrs.  Browning's  pic- 
ture of  Keats, 

The  real  Adonis,  with  the  hymeneal 
Fresh  vernal  buds  half  sunk  between 
His  youthful  curls.^ 

*  Spoon  River  Anthology. 

'  Out  from   Behind    This  Mask. 

*  A  Vision  of  Poets. 


The  Mortal  Coil  69 

It  is  obnoxious  in  Alexander  Smith's  portrait  of 

his  hero, 

A  lovely  youth, 
With  dainty  cheeks,  and  ringlets  like  a  girl's.^ 

And  in  poorer  verse  it  is  unquotable.-  Someone 
has  pointed  out  that  decadent  poetry  is  always  dis- 
tinguished by  over-insistence  upon  the  heroine's  hair, 
and  surely  sentimental  verse  on  poets  is  marked  by 
the  same  defect.  Hair  is  doubtless  essential  to 
poetic  beauty,  but  the  poet's  strength,  unlike  Sam- 
son's, emphatically  does  not  reside  in  it. 

"Broad  Homeric  brows,"  ^  poets  invariably  pos- 
sess, but  the  less  phrenological  aspect  of  their  beauty 
is  more  stressed.  The  differentiating  mark  of  the 
singer's  face  is  a  certain  luminous  quality,  as  of  the 
soul  shining  through.  Lamb  noticed  this  peculiarity 
of  Coleridge,  declaring,  "His  face  when  he  repeats 
his  verses  hath  its  ancient  glory;  an  archangel  a  lit- 
tle damaged."  "*  Francis  Thompson  was  especially 
struck  by  this  phenomenon.  In  lines  To  a  Poet 
Breaking  Silence,  he  asserts, 

Yes,  in  this  silent  interspace 
God  sets  his  poems  in  thy  face, 

and  again,  in  Her  Portrait,  he  muses, 

'  A  Life  Drama. 

*  See  Henry  Timrod,  A  Vision  of  Poesy  (1898);  Frances 
Fuller,  To  Edith  May  (1851)  ;  Metta  Fuller,  Lines  to  a 
Poetess  (1851). 

'  See  Wordsworth,  On  the  Death  of  James  Hogg;  Browning, 
Sordello,  By  the  Fireside;  Mrs.  Browning,  Aurora  Leigh; 
Principal  Shairp,  Balliol  Scholars;  Alfred  Noyes,  Tales  of  the 
Mermaid  Inn. 

*  E.  V.  Lucas,  The  Life  of  Charles  Lamb,  Vol.  L,  p.  500. 


70  The  Poet*s  Poet 

How  should  I  gage  what  beauty  is  her  dole, 
Who  cannot  see  her  countenance  for  her  soul, 
As  birds  see  not  the  casement  for  the  sky. 

It  is  through  the  eyes,  of  course,  that  the  soul 
seems  to  shine  most  radiantly.  Through  them,  Ru- 
pert Brooke's  friends  recognized  his  poetical  nature, 
— through  his 

Dream  dazzled  gaze 

Aflame  and  burning  like  a  god  in  song.^ 

Generally  the  poet  is  most  struck  by  the  abstracted 
expression  that  he  surprises  in  his  eyes.  Into  it, 
in  the  case  of  later  poets,  there  probably  enters  un- 
conscious imitation  of  Keats's  gaze,  that  "inward 
look,  perfectly  divine,  like  a  Delphian  priestess  who 
saw  visions."  "  In  many  descriptions,  as  of  "the 
rapt  one — the  heaven-eyed"  ^  Coleridge,  or  of  Ed- 
mund Spenser, 

With  haunted  eyes,  like  starlit  forest  pools  * 

one  feels  the  aesthetic  possibilities  of  an  abstracted 

expression.     But   Mrs.   Browning  fails  to  achieve 

a  happy  effect.    When  she  informs  us  of  a  fictitious 

poet  that 

His  steadfast  eye  burnt  inwardly 
As  burning  out  his  soul,^ 


'  W.  W.  Gibson,  To  E.  M.,  In  Memory  of  Rupert  Brooke. 
^  The   words   are    Benjamin    Haydn's.      See    Sidney    Colvin, 
John  Keats,  p.   79. 

*  Wordsworth,  On  the  Death  of  James  Hogg. 

*  Alfred  Noyes,  Tales  of  the  Mermaid  Inn. 
"  The  Poet's  Vow. 


The  Mortal  Coil  yi 

we  feel  uneasily  that  someone  should  rouse  him 
from  his  revery  before  serious  damage  is  done. 

The  idealistic  poet  weans  his  eyes  from  their 
pragmatic  character  in  varying  degree.  Words- 
worth, in  poetic  mood,  seems  to  have  kept  them  half 
closed.^     Mrs.  Browning  notes  his 

Humble-lidded  eyes,  as  one  inclined 

Before  the  sovran-thought  of  his  own  mind.^ 

Clough,  also,  impressed  his  poetic  brothers  by  "his 
bewildered  look,  and  his  half-closed  eyes."  ^ 

But  the  poet  sometimes  goes  farther,  making  it 
his  ideal  to 

See,  no  longer  blinded  with  his  eyes,* 

and  may  thus  conceive  of  the  master-poet  as  neces- 
sarily blind.  Milton's  noble  lines  on  blindness  in 
Samson  Agonistes  have  had  much  to  do,  undoubt- 
edly, with  the  conceptions  of  later  poets.  Though 
blindness  is  seldom  extended  to  other  than  actual 
poets,  within  the  confines  of  verse  having  such  a 
poet  as  subject  it  is  referred  to,  often,  as  a  partial 
explanation  of  genius.     Thus  Gray  says  of  Milton, 

The  living  throne,  the  sapphire  blaze 
Where  angels  tremble  while  they  gaze 
He  saw,  but  blasted  with  excess  of  light. 
Closed  his  eyes  in  endless  night,^ 

^  See  A  Poet's  Epitaph,  and  Sonnet:  Most  Sweet  it  is  with 
Unuplifted  Eyes. 

'On  a  Portrait  of  Wordszvorth. 

^  The  quotation  is  by  Longfellow.  See  J.  I.  Osborne,  Arthur 
Hugh  Clough. 

*  See  Rupert  Brooke,  Not  With  I'ain  Tears. 

^Progress  of  Poesy. 


72  The  Poet's  Poet 

and  most  other  poems  on  Milton  follow  this  fancy. ^ 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  verse  on  P.  B.  Marston,  also, 
concurring  with  Rossetti's  assertion  that  we  may 

By  the  darkness  of  thine  eyes  discern 
How  piercing  was  the  light  within  thy  soul.^ 

Then,  pre-eminently,  verse  on  Homer  is  character- 
ized by  such  an  assertion  as  that  of  Keats, 

There  is  a  triple  sight  in  blindness  keen.^ 

Though  the  conception  is  not  found  extensively  in 
other  types  of  verse,  one  finds  an  admirer  apostro- 
phizing Wordsworth, 

Thou  that,  when  first  my  quickened  ear 
Thy  deeper  harmonies  might  hear, 
I  imaged  to  myself  as  old  and  blind, 
For  so  were  Milton  and  Mgeonides,* 

and  at  least  one  American  writer,  Richard  Gilder, 
ascribes  blindness  to  his  imaginary  artists.^ 

But  the  old,  inescapable  contradiction  in  aesthetic 
philosophy  crops  up  here.  The  poet  is  concerned 
only  with  ideal  beauty,  yet  the  way  to  it,  for  him, 
must  be  through  sensuous  beauty.  So,  as  opposed  to 
the  picture  of  the  singer  blind  to  his  surroundings, 

^  See  John  Hughes,  To  the  Memory  of  Milton;  William 
Lisle  Bowles,  Milton  in  Age;  Bulwer  Lytton,  Milton;  W.  H. 
Burleigh,   The  Lesson;  R.  C.  Robbins,  Milton. 

'  See  Rossetti,  P.  B.  Marston;  Swinburne,  Transfiguration, 
Marston,  Light;  Watts-Dunton,  A   Grave   by   the  Sea. 

*  See  Keats,  Sonnet  on  Homer;  Landor,  Homer,  Laertes, 
Agatha;  Joyce  Kilmer,  The  Proud  Poet,  Vision. 

*\\'m.  W.  Lord,  Wordsworth  (1845). 

'  See  The  Blind  Poet,  and  Lost.  See  also  Francis  Carlin, 
Blind  O'Cahan  (1918.) 


The  Mortal  Coil  73 

we  have  the  opposite  picture — that  of  a  singer  with 
every  sense  visibly  alert.  At  the  very  beginning  of 
a  narrative  and  descriptive  poem,  the  reader  can 
generally  distinguish  between  the  idealistic  and  the 
sensuous  singer.  The  more  spiritually  minded  poet 
is  usually  characterized  as  blond.  The  natural  tend- 
ency to  couple  a  pure  complexion  and  immaculate 
thoughts  is  surely  aided,  here,  by  portraits  of  Shel- 
ley, and  of  Milton  in  his  youth.  The  brunette  poet, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  perforce  a  member  of  the 
fleshly  school.  The  two  types  are  clearly  differenti- 
ated in  Bulwer  Lytton's  Dispute  of  the  Poets.  The 
spiritual  one 

Lifted   the  azure   light   of   earnest  eyes, 

but  his  brother, 

The  one  with  brighter  hues  and  darker  curls 
Clustering  and  purple  as  the  fruit  of  the  vine, 
Seemed  like  that  Summer-Idol  of  rich  life 
Whom  sensuous  Greece,  inebriate  with  delight 
From  orient  myth  and  symbol-worship  wrought. 

The  decadents  favor  swarthy  poets,  and,  in  describ- 
ing their  features,  seize  upon  the  most  expressive 
symbols  of  sensuality.  Thus  the  hero  of  John 
Davidson's  Ballad  in  Blank  Verse  on  the  Making 
of  a  Poet  is 

A  youth  whose  sultry  eyes 
Bold  brow  and  wanton  mouth  were  not  all  lust. 


74  The  Poet's  Poet 

But  even  the  idealistic  poet,  if  he  be  not  one-sided, 
must  have  sensuous  features,  as  Browning  conceives 
him.     We  are  told  of  Sordello, 

Yourselves  shall  trace 
(The  delicate  nostril  swerving  wide  and  fine, 
A  sharp  and  restless  lip,  so  well  combine 
With  that  calm  brow)  a  soul  fit  to  receive 
Delight  at  every  sense;  you  can  believe 
Sordello  foremost  in  the  regal  class 
Nature  has  broadly  severed  from  her  mass 
Of  men,  and  framed  for  pleasure  .  .  . 

You  recognize  at  once  the  finer  dress 
Of  flesh  that  amply  lets  in  loveliness 
At  eye  and  ear. 

Perhaps  it  is  with  the  idea  that  the  flesh  may  be 
shuffled  off  the  more  easily  that  poets  are  given 
"barely  enough  body  to  imprison  the  soul,"  as  Mrs. 
Browning's  biographer  says  of  her.^  The  imaginary 
bard  is  so  inevitably  slender  that  allusion  to  "the 
poet's  frame"  needs  no  further  description.  Yet, 
once  more,  the  poet  may  seem  to  be  deliberately 
blinding  himself  to  the  facts.  What  of  the  father 
of  English  song,  who,  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  is 
described  by  the  burly  host. 

He  in  the  waast  is  shape  as  wel  as  I ; 
This  were  a  popet  in  an  arm  tenbrace 
For  any  woman,  smal  and  fair  of  face?^ 

*  Mrs.  Anna  B.  Jameson.  George  Stillman  Milliard  says 
of  Mrs.  Browning,  "I  have  never  seen  a  human  frame  which 
seemed  so  nearly  a  transparent  veil  for  a  celestial  and 
immortal  spirit."  Shelley,  Keats,  Clough  and  Swinburne 
undoubtedly  helped   to  strengthen  the   tradition. 

'Prologue  to  Sir  Thopas. 


The  Mortal  Coil  75 

Even  here,  however,  one  can  trace  the  modern 
aesthetic  aversion  to  fat.  Chaucer  undoubtedly  took 
sly  pleasure  in  stressing  his  difference  from  the  cur- 
rent conception  of  the  poet,  which  was  typified  so 
well  by  the  handsome  young  squire,  who 

Coude  songes  make,  and  wel  endyte.^ 

Such,  at  least,  is  the  interpretation  of  Percy  Mack- 
aye,  who  in  his  play,  The  Canterbury  Pilgrims,  de- 
rives the  heartiest  enjoyment  from  Chaucer's  woe 
lest  his  avoirdupois  may  affect  Madame  Eglantine 
unfavorably.  The  modern  English  poet  who  is  op- 
pressed by  too,  too  solid  flesh  is  inclined  to  follow 
Chaucer's  precedent  and  take  it  philosophically. 
James  Thomson  allowed  the  stanza  about  himself, 
interpolated  by  his  friends  into  the  Castle  of  In- 
dolence, to  remain,  though  it  begins  with  the  line, 

A  bard  here  dwelt,  more  fat  than  bard  beseems. 

And  in  these  days,  the  sentimental  reader  is  shocked 
by  Joyce  Kilmer's  callous  assertion,  "I  am  fat  and 
gross.  ...  In  my  youth  I  was  slightly  decorative. 
But  now  I  drink  beer  instead  of  writing  about 
absinthe."  - 

Possibly  it  would  not  be  unreasonable  to  take 
difference  in  weight  as  another  distinction  between 
idealistic  and  sensuous  poets.  Of  one  recent  realistic 
poet  it  is  recorded,  "How  a  poet  could  not  be  a  glori- 

*  Prologue. 

'Letter  to  Father  Daly,  November,  1914. 


76  The  Poet's  Poet 

ous  eater,  he  said  he  could  not  see,  for  the  poet  was 
happier  than  other  men,  by  reason  of  his  acuter 
senses."  ^  As  a  rule,  however,  decadent  and  spir- 
itual poets  alike  shrink  from  the  thought  of  gross- 
ness,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Joyce  Kilmer  was  able 
to  win  his  wager,  "I  will  write  a  poem  about  a 
delicatessen  shop.  It  will  be  a  high-brow  poem.  It 
will  be  liked."  -  Of  course  Keats  accustomed  the 
public  to  the  idea  that  there  are  aesthetic  distinctions 
in  the  sense  of  taste,  but  throughout  the  last  century 
the  idea  of  a  poet  enjoying  solid  food  was  an 
anomaly.  Whitman's  proclamation  of  himself, 
"Turbulent,  fleshy,  sensual,  eating  and  drinking  and 
breeding"^  automatically  shut  him  off,  in  the  minds 
of  his  contemporaries,  from  consideration  as  a  poet. 
It  is  a  nice  question  just  how  far  a  poet  may  go 
in  ignoring  the  demands  of  the  flesh.  Shelley's 
friends  record  that  his  indifference  reached  the 
stage  of  forgetting,  for  days  at  a  time,  that  he  was 
in  a  body  at  all.  Even  more  extreme  was  the  atti- 
tude of  Poe,  as  it  is  presented  at  length  in  Olive 
Dargan's  drama,  The  Poet.  So  cordial  is  his  de- 
testation of  food  and  bed  that  he  not  only  eschews 
them  himself,  but  withholds  them  from  his  wife, 
driving  the  poor  woman  to  a  lingering  death  from 
tuberculosis,  while  he  himself  succumbs  to  delirium 
tremens.  In  fact,  excessive  abstemiousness,  foster- 
ing digestive  disorders,  has  been  alleged  to  be  the 

*  Richard  Le  Gallienne,  Joyce  Kilmer. 

'  Robert  Cortez  Holliday,  Memoir  of  Joyce  Kilmer,  p.  62. 

'  Song  of  Myself. 


The  Mortal  Coil  yj 

secret  of  the  copious  melancholy  verse  in  the  last 
century.  It  is  not  the  ill-nourished  poet,  however, 
but  enemies  of  the  melancholy  type  of  verse,  who 
oflFer  this  explanation.  Thus  Walt  Whitman  does 
not  hesitate  to  write  poetry  on  the  effect  of  his  di- 
gestive disorders  upon  his  gift,^  and  George  Mere- 
dith lays  the  weakness  of  Manfred  to  the  fact  that 
it  was 

Projected  from  the  bilious  Childe.^ 

But  to  all  conscious  of  possessing  poetical  tempera- 
ment in  company  with  emaciation,  the  explanation 
has  seemed  intolerably  sordid. 

To  be  sure,  the  unhealthy  poet  is  not  ubiquitous. 
Wordsworth's  Prehide  describes  a  life  of  exuberant 
physical  energy.  Walt  Whitman's  position  we  have 
quoted,  and  after  him  came  a  number  of  American 
writers,  assigning  a  football  physique  to  their  heroes. 
J.  G.  Holland's  poet  was  the  superior  of  his  com- 
rades when  brawn  as  well  as  brain,  contended.^  Wil- 
liam Henry  Burleigh,  also,  described  his  favorite 
poet  as 

A  man  who  measured  six  feet  four: 

Broad  were  his  shoulders,  ample  was  his  chest, 

Compact  his  frame,  his  muscles  of  the  best.* 

With  the  recent  revival  of  interest  in  Whitman,  the 
brawny  bard  has  again  come  into  favor  in  certain 
quarters.      Joyce   Kilmer,   as  has  been   noted,   was 

^  See  As  I  Sit  Writing  Here. 
'George  Meredith,  Manfred. 
*  Kathrina. 
*A  Portrait. 


78  The  Poet's  Poet 

his  strongest  advocate,  inveighing  against  weakly 
verse-writers, 

A  heavy  handed  blow,  I  think, 

Would  make  your  veins  drip  scented  ink.^ 

But  the  poet  hero  of  the  Harold  Bell  Wright  type 
is  receiving  his  share  of  ridicule,  as  well  as  praise, 
at  present.  A  farce.  Fame  and  the  Poet,  by  Lord 
Dunsany,  advertises  the  adulation  by  feminine  read- 
ers resulting  from  a  poet's  pose  as  a  "man's  man." 
And  Ezra  Pound,  who  began  his  career  as  an  exem- 
plar of  virility,-  finds  himself  unable  to  keep  up  the 
pose,  and  so  resorts  to  the  complaint. 

We  are  compared  to  that  sort  of  person 
Who  wanders  about  announcing  his  sex 
As  if  he  had  just  discovered  it.^ 

The  most  sensible  argument  offered  by  the  advocate 
of  better  health  in  poets  is  made  by  the  chronic  in- 
valid, Mrs.  Browning.  She  causes  Aurora  Leigh's 
cousin  Romney  to  argue, 

Reflect;  if  art  be  in  truth  the  higher  life, 
You  need  the  lower  life  to  stand  upon 
In  order  to  reach  up  unto  that  higher ; 
And  none  can  stand  a  tip-toe  in  that  place 
He  cannot  stand  in  with  two  stable  feet.* 

Mrs.  Browning's  theory  is  not  out  of  key  with  a  pro- 
fessedly scientific  account  of  genius,  not  unpopular 

^  To  Certain  Poets. 

'  See  The  Revolt  against  the  Crepuscular  Spirit  in  Modern 
Poetry. 

^  The  Condolence. 

*  Aurora  Leigh.  See  also  the  letter  to  Robert  Browning, 
May  6,  1845. 


The  Mortal  Coil  79 

nowadays,  which  represents  art  as  the  result  of  ex- 
cess vitaHty.^ 

Yet,  on  the  whole,  the  frail  poet  still  holds  his 
own;  how  securely  is  illustrated  by  the  familiarity 
of  the  idea  as  applied  to  other  artists,  outside  the 
domain  of  poetry.  It  is  noteworthy  that  in  a  re- 
cent book  of  essays  by  the  painter,  Birge  Harrison, 
one  runs  across  the  contention  : 

In  fact,  as  a  noted  painter  once  said  to  me:  These 
semi-invalids  neither  need  nor  deserve  our  commis- 
eration, for  in  reality  the  beggars  have  the  advantage 
of  us.  Their  nerves  are  always  sensitive  and  keyed 
to  pitch,  while  we  husky  chaps  have  to  flog  ours  up  to 
the  point.  We  must  dig  painfully  through  the  outer 
layers  of  flesh  before  we  can  get  at  the  spirit,  while  the 
invalids  are  all  spirit.^ 

That  such  a  belief  had  no  lack  of  support  from 
facts  in  the  last  century,  is  apparent  merely  from 
naming  over  the  chief  poets.  Coleridge,  Byron, 
Shelley,  Keats,  Mrs.  Browning,  Rossetti,  all  publish 
their  ill-health  through  their  verse.  Even  Browning, 
in  whose  verse,  if  anywhere,  one  would  expect  to 
find  the  virile  poet,  shows  Sordello  turned  to  poetry 
by  the  fact  of  his  physical  weakness.^ 

Obviously,  if  certain  invalids  possess  a  short-cut 
to  their  souls,  as  Birge  Harrison  suggests,  the  nature 

'  See  R.  C.  Robbins,  Michael  Angela  (1904)- 

'  From  Landscape  Painters,  p.   184. 

'  So  nearly  ubiquitous  has  ill-health  been  among  modern 
poets,  that  Max  Nordau,  in  his  widely  read  indictment  of 
art.  Degeneration,  was  able  to  make  out  a  plausible  case  for 
his  theory  that  genius  is  a  disease  which  is  always  accom- 
panied by  physical  stigmata. 


8o 


The  Poet's  Poet 


of  their  complaint  must  be  significant.  A  jumping 
toothache  would  hardly  be  an  advantage  to  a  suf- 
ferer in  turning  his  thoughts  to  poesy.  Since  verse 
writers  recoil  from  the  suggestion  that  dyspepsia  is 
the  name  of  their  complaint,  let  us  ask  them  to  ex- 
plain its  real  character  to  us.  To  take  one  of  our 
earliest  examples,  what  is  the  malady  of  William 
Lisles  Bowles'  poet,  of  whom  we  learn, 

Too  long  had  sickness  left  her  pining  trace 
With  slow  still  touch  on  each  decaying  grace ; 
Untimely  sorrow  marked  his  thoughtful  mien ; 
Despair  upon  his  languid  smile  was  seen.^ 

We  can  never  know.  But  with  Shelley,  it  becomes 
evident  that  tuberculosis  is  the  typical  poet's  com- 
plaint. Shelley  was  convinced  that  he  himself  was 
destined  to  die  of  it.  The  irreverent  Hogg  records 
that  Shelley  was  also  afraid  of  death  from  ele- 
phantiasis,- but  he  keeps  that  affliction  out  of  his 
verse.  So  early  as  the  composition  of  the  Revolt 
of  Islam,  Shelley  tells  us  of  himself,  in  the  intro- 
duction, 

Death  and  love  are  yet  contending  for  their  prey, 

and  in  Adonais  he  appears  as 

A  power 
Girt   round    with    weakness. 


A  light  spear  .  .  . 

Vibrated,  as  the  everbeating  heart 

Shook  the  weak  hand  that  grasped  it. 

^Monody  on  Henry  Headley. 

*T.  J.  Hogg,  Life  of  Shelley,  p.  458. 


The  Mortal  Coil  8i 

Shelley's  imaginary  poet,  Lionel,  gains  in  poetical 
sensibility  as  consumption  saps  his  strength : 

You  might  see  his  colour  come  and  go. 
And  the  softest  strain  of  music  made 
Sweet  smiles,  yet  sad,  arise  and  fade 
Amid  the  dew  of  his  tender  eyes ; 
And   the  breath    with    intermitting  flow 
Made  his  pale  lips  quiver  and  part.^ 

The  deaths  from  tuberculosis  of  Kirke  White  - 
and  of  Keats,  added  to  Shelley's  verse,  so  affected 
the  imagination  of  succeeding  poets  that  for  a  time 
the  cough  became  almost  ubiquitous  in  verse.  In 
major  poetry  it  appears  for  the  last  time  in  Tenny- 
son's The  Brook,  where  the  young  poet  hastens  to 
Italy,  "too  late,"  but  in  American  verse  it  con- 
tinued to  rack  the  frame  of  geniuses  till  the  germ 
theory  robbed  it  of  romance  and  the  anti-tubercu- 
losis campaign  drove  it  out  of  existence. 

Without  the  aid  of  physical  causes,  the  exquisite 
sensitiveness  of  the  poet's  spirit  is  sometimes  re- 
garded as  enough  to  produce  illness.  Thus  Alex- 
ander Smith  explains  his  sickly  hero : 

More  tremulous 
Than  the  soft  star  that  in  the  azure  East 
Trembles  with  pity  o'er  bright  bleeding  day 
Was  his  frail  soul.^ 

Arnold,  likewise,  in  Thyrsis,  follows  the  poetic  tra- 
dition in  thus  vaguely  accounting  for  Clough's  death : 

*  Rosalind  and  Helen. 

'  See  Kirke  White,  Sonnet  to  Consumption. 

'A  Life  Drama. 


82  The  Poet's  Poet 

Some  life  of  men  unblest 

He  knew,  which  made  him  droop,  and  filled  his  head. 

He  went,  his  piping  took  a  troubled  sound 

Of  storms  that  rage  outside  our  happy  ground. 

He  could  not  wait  their  passing;  he  is  dead. 

In  addition,  the  intense  application  that  genius  de- 
mands leaves  its  mark  upon  the  body.  Recognition 
of  this  fact  has  doubtless  been  aided  by  Dante's  por- 
trait, which  Wilde  has  repainted  in  verse : 

The  calm,  white  brow,  as  calm  as  earliest  morn. 
The  eyes  that  flashed  with  passionate  love  and  scorn, 
The  lips  that  sang  of  Heaven  and  of  Hell, 
The  almond  face  that  Giotto  drew  so  well, 
The  weary  face  of  Dante.^ 

Rossetti  repeats  the  tradition  that  the  composition 
of  the  Inferno  so  preyed  upon  Dante  that  the  super- 
stitious believed  that  he  had  actually  visited  Hades, 
and  whispered  to  one  another, 

Behold  him,  how  Hell's  reek 

Has  crisped  his  beard  and  singed  his  cheek.^ 

A  similar  note  is  in  Francis  Thompson's  descrip- 
tion of  Coventry  Patmore : 

And  lo !  that  hair  is  blanched  with  travel-heats  of  hell.' 

In  this  connection  one  thinks  at  once  of  Shelley's 
prematurely  graying  hair,  reflected  in  description  of 

'  Ravenna. 
'Dante  at  Verona. 
'A  Captain  of  Song. 


i 


The  Mortal  Coil  83 

his  heroes  harried  by  their  genius  into  ill  health. 
Prince  Athanase  is 

A  youth  who  as  with  toil  and  travel 

Had  grown  quite  weak  and  gray  before  his  time.^ 

In  Alastor,  too,  we  see  the  hero  wasting  aw^ay 
until 

His  limbs  were  lean ;  his  scattered  hair, 
Sered  by  the  autumn  of  strange  suffering, 
Sung  dirges  in  the  wind :  his  listless  hand 
Hung  like  dead  bone  within  his  withered  skin; 
Life,  and  the  lustre  that  consumed  it,  shone 
As  in  a  furnace  burning  secretly 
From  his  dark  eyes  alone. 

The  likeness  of  Bordello  to  Shelley  -  is  marked  in 
the  ravages  of  his  genius  upon  his  flesh,  so  that  at  the 
climax  of  the  poem  he,  though  still  a  young  man,  is 
gray  and  haggard  and  fragile. 

Though  ill-health  is  a  handicap  to  him,  the  poet's 
subjection  to  the  mutability  that  governs  the  mun- 
dane sphere  is  less  important,  some  persons  would 
declare,  in  the  matter  of  beauty  and  health  than  in 
the  matter  of  sex.  Can  a  poetic  spirit  overcome  the 
calamity  of  being  cast  by  Fate  into  the  body  of  a 
woman  ? 

As  the  battle  of  feminism  dragged  its  bloody  way 
through  all  fields  of  endeavor  in  the  last  century, 

^Prince  Athanase,  a  fragment. 

"Browning  himself  pointed  out  a  similarity  between  them, 
in  the  opening  of  Book  I. 


84  The  Poet's  Poet 

it  of  course  has  left  its  traces  in  the  realm  of  poetry. 
But  here  the  casualties  appear  to  be  light, — in  fact, 
it  is  a  disappointment  to  the  suffragist  to  find  most 
of  the  blows  struck  by  the  female  aspirant  for  glory, 
with  but  few  efforts  to  parry  them  on  the  part  of 
the  male  contingent.  Furthermore,  in  verse  con- 
cerned with  specific  woman  poets,  men  have  not 
failed  to  give  them  their  due,  or  more.  From 
Miriam  ^  and  Sappho,"  to  the  long  list  of  nineteenth 
century  female  poets — Mrs.  Browning,^  Christina 
Rossetti,*  Emily  Bronte,^  Alice  Meynell,^  Felicia 
Hemans,^  Adelaide  Proctor,^  Helen  Hunt,^  Emma 
Lazarus  ^^ — one  finds  woman  the  subject  of  compli- 
mentary verse  from  their  brothers.  There  is  noth- 
ing to  complain  of  here,  we  should  say  at  first,  and 
yet,  in  the  unreserved  praise  given  to  their  greatest 
is  a  note  that  irritates  the  feminists.  For  men  have 
made  it  plain  that  Sappho  was  not  like  other  women ; 

^  See  Barry  Cornwall,  Miriam. 

*  Southey,  Sappho;  Freneau,  Monument  of  Phaon;  Kings- 
ley,  Sappho,  Swinburne,  On  the  Cliffs,  Sapphics,  Anactoria; 
Cale  Young  Rice,  Sappho's  Death  Song;  J.  G.  Percival, 
Sappho;  Percy  Mackaye,  Sappho  and  Phaon;  W.  A.  Percy, 
Sappho  in  Lenkos. 

*  Browning,  One  Word  More,  Preface  to  The  Ring  and  the 
Book;  James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  E.  B.  B.;  Sidney  Dobell,  On 
the  Death  of  Mrs.  Browning. 

*  Swinburne,  Ballad  of  Appeal  to  Christina  Rossetti,  New 
Year's  Eve,  Dedication   to   Christina  Rossetti. 

"  Stephen  Phillips,  Emily  Bronte. 

"  Francis  Thompson,  Sister  Songs,  On  her  Photograph,  To 
a  Poet  Breaking  Silence. 

'  L.  E.  Maclean,  Felicia  Hemans. 

*  Edwin  Arnold,  Adelaide  Anne  Proctor. 

*  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  H.  H. 
^"Ibid.,  To  E.  Lazarus. 


The  Mortal  Coil  85 

it  is  the  "virility"  of  her  style  that  appeals  to  them; 
they  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  hail  her  "manlike 
maiden."  ^  So  the  feminists  have  been  only  embit- 
tered by  their  brothers'  praise. 

As  time  wears  on,  writers  averse  to  feminine 
verse  seem  to  be  losing  the  courage  of  their  convic- 
tions. At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  wom- 
an's opponent  was  not  afraid  to  express  himself. 
Woman  writers  were  sometimes  praised,  but  it  was 
for  one  quality  alone,  the  chastity  of  their  style.  John 
Hughes  -  and  Tom  Moore  ^  both  deplored  the  need 
of  such  an  element  in  masculine  verse.  But  Moore 
could  not  resist  counteracting  the  effect  of  his  chary 
praise  by  a  play.  The  Blue  Stocking,  which  burlesques 
the  literary  pose  in  women.  He  seemed  to  feel, 
also,  that  he  had  neatly  quelled  their  poetical  as- 
pirations when  he  advertised  his  aversion  to  marry- 
ing a  literary  woman.*  Despite  a  chivalrous  senti- 
mentality, Barry  Cornwall  took  his  stand  with 
Moore  on  the  point,  exhorting  women  to  choose 
love  rather  than  a  literary  career.^  More  seriously, 
Landor  offered  the  same  discouragement  to  his  young 
friend  with  poetical  tastes. •*  On  the  whole  the  preva- 
lent view  expressed  early  in  the  nineteenth  century 
is  the  considerate  one  that  while  women  lack  a  lit- 
erary gift,  they  have,  none  the  less,  sweet  poetical 

^  Swinburne,  On   the  Cliffs. 

'  See  To  the  Author  of  "A  Fatal  Friendship." 

'  See  To  Mrs.  Henry  Tighe. 

*  See    The    Catalogue.      Another    of    his    poems    ridiculing 
poetesses  is   The  Squinting  Poetess. 

'  See  To  a  Poetess. 

*  See  To  II' rite  as  Your  Sweet  Mother  Does. 


86  The  Poet's  Poet 

natures.     Bulwer  Lytton  phrased  the  old-fashioned 
distinction  between  his  hero  and  heroine, 

In  each  lay  poesy — for  woman's  heart 
Nurses  the  stream,  unsought  and  oft  unseen ; 
And  if  it  flow  not  through  the  tide  of  art, 
Nor  win  the  glittering  daylight — you  may  ween 
It  slumbers,  but  not  ceases,  and  if  checked 
The  egress  of  rich  words,  it  flows  in  thought, 
And  in  its  silent  mirror  doth  reflect 
Whate'er  aft'ection  to  its  banks  hath  brought.^ 

Yet  the  poetess  has  two  of  the  strongest  poets  of 
the  romantic  period  on  her  side.  Wordsworth,  in 
his  many  allusions  to  his  sister  Dorothy,  appeared 
to  feel  her  possibilities  equal  to  his  own,  and  in 
verses  on  an  anthology,  he  offered  praise  of  a  more 
general  nature  to  verse  written  by  women.-  And  be- 
side the  sober  judgment  of  Wordsworth,  one  may 
place  the  unbounded  enthusiasm  of  Shelley,  who 
not  only  praises  extravagantly  the  verse  of  an  in- 
dividual, Emilia  Viviani,^  but  who  also  offers  us  an 
imaginary  poetess  of  supreme  powers, — Cythna,  in 
The  Revolt  of  Islam. 

It  is  disappointing  to  the  agitator  to  find  the  ques- 
tion dropping  out  of  sight  in  later  verse.  In  the 
Victorian  period  it  comes  most  plainly  to  the  sur- 
face in  Browning,  and  while  the  exquisite  praise  of 
his 

Lyric  love,  half  angel  and  half  bird, 

*  Milton. 

*  See  To  Lady  Mary  Lowther. 

*  See  the  introduction  to  Epipsychidion. 


The  Mortal  Coil  87 

reveals  him  a  believer  in  at  least  sporadic  female 
genius,  his  position  on  the  question  of  championing 
the  entire  sex  is  at  least  equivocal.  In  The  Two 
Poets  of  Croisk  he  deals  with  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury in  France,  where  the  literary  woman  came  so 
gloriously  into  her  own.  Browning  represents  a 
man  writing  under  a  feminine  pseudonym  and  win- 
ning the  admiration  of  the  celebrities  of  the  day — 
only  to  have  his  verse  tossed  aside  as  worthless  as 
soon  as  his  sex  is  revealed.  Woman  wins  by  her 
charm,  seems  to  be  the  moral.  A  hopeful  sign, 
however,  is  the  fact  that  of  late  years  one  poet 
produced  his  best  work  under  a  feminine  noni  de 
plimie,  and  found  it  no  handicap  in  obtaining  recog- 
nition.-^ 

If  indifference  is  the  attitude  of  the  male  poet, 
not  so  of  the  woman  writer.  She  insists  that  her 
work  shall  redound,  not  to  her  own  glory,  merely, 
but  to  that  of  her  entire  sex  as  well.  For  the  most 
worthy  presentation  of  her  case,  we  must  turn  to 
Mrs.  Browning,  though  the  radical  feminist  is  not 
likely  to  approve  of  her  attitude.  "My  secret  pro- 
fession of  faith,"  she  admitted  to  Robert  Browning, 
"is — that  there  is  a  natural  inferiority  of  mind  in 
women — of  the  intellect — not  by  any  means  of  the 
moral  nature — and  that  the  history  of  Art  and  of 
genius  testifies  to  this  fact  openly."  -  Still,  despite 
this  private  surrender  to  the  enemy,  Mrs,  Browning 
defends  her  sex  well, 

nVilliam  Sharp,  "Fiona  McLeod." 

*  Letter  to  Robert  Browning,  July  4,  1845. 


88  The  Poet's  Poet 

In  a  short  narrative  poem,  Mother  and  Poet,  Mrs. 
Browning  claims  for  her  heroine  the  sterner  virtues 
that  have  been  denied  her  by  the  average  critic,  who 
assigns  woman  to  sentimental  verse  as  her  proper 
sphere.  Of  course  her  most  serious  consideration 
of  the  problem  is  to  be  found  in  Aurora  Leigh.  She 
feels  that  making  her  imaginary  poet  a  woman  is  a 
departure  from  tradition,  and  she  strives  to  justify 
it.  Much  of  the  debasing  adulation  and  petty  criti- 
cism heaped  upon  Aurora  must  have  been  taken 
from  Mrs.  Browning's  own  experience.  Ignoring 
insignificant  antagonism  to  her,  Aurora  is  seriously 
concerned  with  the  charges  that  the  social  worker, 
Romney  Leigh,  brings  against  her  sex.  Romney 
declares, 

Women  as   you   are, 
Mere  women,  personal  and  passionate. 
You  give  us  doting  mothers,  and  perfect  wives. 
Sublime  Madonnas  and  enduring  saints ! 
We  get  no  Christ  from  you, — and  verily 
We  shall  not  get  a  poet,  in  my  mind. 

Aurora  is  obliged  to  acknowledge  to  herself  that 
Romney  is  right  in  charging  women  with  inability 
to  escape  from  personal  considerations.  She  con- 
fesses, 

We  women  are  too  apt  to  look  to  one, 
Which   proves    a   certain   impotence   in   art. 

But  in  the  end,  and  after  much  struggling,  Aurora 
wins   for  her  poetry  even  Romney's  reluctant  ad- 


The  Mortal  Coil  89 

miration.  Mrs.  Browning's  implication  seems  to  be 
that  the  intensely  "personal  and  passionate"  nature 
of  woman  is  an  advantage  to  her,  if  once  she  can 
lift  herself  from  its  thraldom,  because  it  saves  her 
from  the  danger  of  dry  generalization  which  assails 
verse  of  more  masculine  temper.^ 

Of  only  less  vital  concern  to  poets  than  the  ques- 
tion of  the  poet's  physical  constitution  is  the  prob- 
lem of  his  environment.  Where  will  the  chains  of 
mortality  least  hamper  his  aspiring  spirit? 

In  answer,  one  is  haunted  by  the  line, 

I  too  was  born  in  Arcadia. 

Still,  this  is  not  the  answer  that  poets  would  make 
in  all  periods.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  for  ex- 
ample, though  a  stereotyped  conception  of  the  shep- 
herd poet  ruled, — as  witness  the  verses  of 
Hughes,-  Collins,^  and  Thomson,* — it  is  obvious 
that  these  gentlemen  were  in  no  literal  sense  ex- 
pressing their  views  on  the  poet's  habitat.  It  was 
hardly  necessary  for  Thomas  Hood  to  parody  their 
efforts  in  his  eclogues  giving  a  broadly  realistic 
turn  to  shepherds  assuming  tlie  singing  robes."' 
Wherever  a  personal  element  enters,  as  in  John 
Hughes'  Letter  to  a  Friend  in  the  Country,  and  Sid- 

*  For  treatment  of  the  question  of  tlie  poet's  sex  in  American 
verse  by  women,  see  Emma  Lazarus,  Echoes;  Olive  Dargan, 
Ye  Who  are  to  Sing. 

*  See  Corydon. 

'  See  Selim,  or  the  Shepherd's  Moral. 

*  See  Pastoral  on  the  Death  of  Dceynon. 

*  See  Huggins  and  Duggvis,  and  The  Forlorn  Shepherd's 
Complaint. 


90 


The  Poet's  Poet 


ney  Dyer's  A  Country  Walk,  it  is  apparent  that  the 
poet  is  not  indigenous  to  the  soil.  He  is  the  city 
gentleman,  come  out  to  enjoy  a  holiday. 

With  the  growth  of  a  romantic  conception  of  na- 
ture, the  relation  of  the  poet  to  nature  becomes,  of 
course,  more  intimate.  But  Cowper  and  Thomson 
keep  themselves  out  of  their  nature  poetry  to  such 
an  extent  that  it  is  hard  to  tell  what  their  ideal 
position  would  be,  and  not  till  the  publication  of 
Beattie's  The  Minstrel  do  we  find  a  poem  in  which 
the  poet  is  nurtured  under  the  influence  of  a  natural 
scenery.  At  the  very  climax  of  the  romantic  period 
the  poet  is  not  always  bred  in  the  country.  We 
find  Byron  revealing  himself  as  one  who  seeks  na- 
ture only  occasionally,  as  a  mistress  in  whose  novelty 
resides  a  good  deal  of  her  charm.  Shelley,  too,  por- 
trays a  poet  reared  in  civilization,  but  escaping  to 
nature.^  Still,  it  is  obvious  that  ever  since  the 
time  of  Burns  and  Wordsworth,  the  idea  of  a  poet 
nurtured  from  infancy  in  nature's  bosom  has  been 
extremely  popular. 

There  are  degrees  of  naturalness  in  nature,  how- 
ever. How  far  from  the  hubbub  of  commercialism 
should  the  poet  reside?  Burns  and  Wordsworth 
were  content  with  the  farm  country,  but  for  poets 
whose  theories  were  not  so  intimately  joined  with 
experience  such  an  environment  was  too  tame. 
Bowles  would  send  his  visionary  boy  into  the  wil- 
derness.^    Coleridge  and   Southey   went   so    far  as 

*  See  Epipsychidion,  and  Alastor. 
^  See  The  Visionary  Boy. 


1 


The  Mortal  Coil  91 

to  lay  plans  for  emigrating,  in  person,  to  the  banks 
of  the  Susquehanna.  Shelley  felt  that  savage  con- 
ditions best  foster  poetry.^  Canipbell,  in  Gertrude 
of  Wyoming,  made  his  bard  an  Indian,  and  com- 
mented on  his  songs, 

So  finished  he  the  rhyme,  howe'er  uncouth, 
That  true  to  Nature's  fervid  feelings  ran 
(And  song  is  but  the  eloquence  of  truth). 

The  early  American  poet,  J.  G.  Percival,  expressed 
the  same  theory,  declaring  of  poetry. 

Its  seat  is  deeper  in  the  savage  breast 
Than  in  the  man  of  cities.^ 

To  most  of  us,  this  conception  of  the  poet  is  fa- 
miliar because  of  acquaintance,  from  childhood,  with 
Chibiabus,  "he  the  sweetest  of  all  singers,"  in  Long- 
fellow's Hmwatha. 

But  the  poet  of  to-day  may  well  pause,  before 
he  starts  to  an  Indian  reservation.  What  is  the 
mysterious  benefit  which  the  poet  derives  from  na- 
ture? Humility  and  common  sense.  Burns  would 
probably  answer,  and  that  response  would  not  ap- 
peal to  the  majority  of  poets.  A  mystical  experi- 
ence of  religion,  Wordsworth  would  say,  of  course. 
A  wealth  of  imagery,  nineteenth  century  poets  would 
hardly  think  it  worth  while  to  add,  for  the  influence 
of  natural  scenery  upon  poetic  metaphors  has  come 

*  See  the  Defoise  of  Poetry:  "In  the  infancy  of  society  every 
author  is  necessarily  a  poet." 

*  Poetry. 


92  The  Poet's  Poet 

to  be  such  a  matter  of  course  that  one  hardly 
reaHzes  its  significance.  Perhaps,  too,  poets  should 
admit  oftener  than  they  do  the  influence  of  nature's 
rhythms  upon  their  style.    As  Madison  Cawein  says, 

If  the  wind  and  the  brook  and  the  bird  would  teach 

My  heart  their  beautiful  parts  of  speech, 

And  the  natural  art  they  say  these  with. 

My  soul  would  sing  of  beauty  and  myth 

In  a  rhyme  and  a  meter  none  before 

Have  sung  in  their  love,  or  dreamed  in  their  lore.^ 

The  influence  of  nature  which  the  romantic  poet 
stressed  most,  however,  was  a  negative  one.  In  a 
sense  in  which  Wordsworth  probably  did  not  in- 
tend it,  the  romantic  poet  betrayed  himself  hastening 

to  nature 

More  like  a  man 
Flying  from  something  that  he  dreads,  than  one 
Who  sought  the  thing  he  loved. 

What  nature  is  not,  seemed  often  her  chief  charm 
to  the  romanticist.  Bowles  sent  his  visionary  boy  to 
"romantic  solitude."  Byron  -  and  Shelley,"^  too, 
w^ere  as  much  concerned  with  escaping  from  hu- 
manity as  with  meeting  nature.  Only  Wordsworth, 
in  the  romantic  period,  felt  that  the  poet's  life  ought 
not  to  be  wholly  disjoined  from  his  fellows.* 
Of  course  the  poet's  quarrel  with  his  unapprecia- 

*  Preludes. 

*  See  Childe  Harold. 
'  See  Epipsychidion. 

*  See   Tintern  Abbey,  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality, 
and  The  Prelude. 


The  Mortal  Coil  93 

tive  public  has  led  him  to  express  a  longing  for 
complete  solitude  sporadically,  even  down  to  the 
present  time,  but  by  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  "romantic  solitude"  as  the  poet's  perennial 
habitat  seems  just  about  to  have  run  its  course.  Of 
the  major  poets,  Matthew  Arnold  alone  consistently 
urges  the  poet  to  flee  from  "the  strange  disease  of 
modern  life."  The  Scholar  Gypsy  lives  the  ideal 
life  of  a  poet,  Matthew  Arnold  would  say,  and  pre- 
serves his  poetical  temperament  because  of  his  es- 
cape from  civilization : 

For  early  didst  thou  leave  the  world,  with  powers 

Fresh,  undiverted  to  the  world  without. 

Firm  to  their  mark,  not  spent  on  other  things ; 

Free  from  the  sick  fatigue,  the  languid  doubt 

Which  much  to  have  tried,  in  much  been  baffled  brings. 

No  doubt,  solitude  magnifies  the  poet's  sense  of  his 
own  personality.  Stephen  Phillips  says  of  Emily 
Bronte's  poetic  gift, 

Only  barren  hills 
Could  wring  the  woman  riches  out  of  thee,^ 

and  there  are  several  poets  of  whom  a  similar  state- 
ment might  be  made.  But  the  Victorians  were 
aware  that  only  half  of  a  poet's  nature  was  devel- 
oped thus.  Tennyson  -  and  Mrs.  Browning  ^  both 
sounded  a  warning  as  to  the  dangers  of  complete 

^  Emily  Bronte. 
*  See  The  Palace  of  Art. 

'  See  Th^  Poet's  Vow;  Letters  to  Robert  Browning,  Janu- 
ary I,  1846,  and  March  20,  1845. 


94  The  Poet's  Poet 

isolation.  And  at  present,  though  the  eremite  poet 
is  still  with  us,^  he  does  not  have  everything  his 
own  way. 

For  it  has  begun  to  occur  to  poets  that  it  may  not 
have  been  merely  an  untoward  accident  that  several 
of  their  loftiest  brethren  were  reared  in  London. 
In  the  romantic  period  even  London-bred  Keats  said, 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

The  coy  muse,  with  me  she  would  not  live 
In  this  dark  city,^ 

and  the  American  romanticist,  Emerson,  said  of 
the  poet. 

In  cities  he  was  low  and  mean ; 

The  mountain  waters  washed  him  clean.^ 

But  Lowell  protested  against  such  a  statement, 
avowing  of  the  muse. 

She  can  find  a  nobler  theme  for  song 

In  the  most  loathsome  man  that  blasts  the  sight 

Than  in  the  broad  expanse  of  sea  and  shore.* 

A  number  of  the  Victorians  acknowledged  that 
they  lived  from  choice  in  London.  Christina  Ros- 
setti  admitted  frankly  that  she  preferred  London  to 
the  country,  and  defended  herself  with  Bacon's  state- 

^  See  Lascelles  Ambercrombe,  An  Escape;  J.  E.  Flecker, 
Dirge;  Madison  Cawein,  Comrading;  Yeats,  The  Lake  Isle 
of  Innisfree. 

^Epistle  to  George  Felton  Mathew.  Wordsworth's  sonnet, 
"Earth  has  not  anything  to  show  more  fair,"  seems  to  have 
been  unique  at  this  time. 

•  The  Poet. 

*  L'EfWoi. 


The  Mortal  Coil  95 

merit,  "The  souls  of  the  living  are  the  beauty  of 
the  world."  ^  Mrs.  Browning  made  Aurora  out- 
grow pastoral  verse,  and  not  only  reside  in  London, 
but  find  her  inspiration  there.  Francis  Thompson 
and  William  Henley  were  not  ashamed  to  admit  that 
they  were  inspired  by  London.  James  Thomson, 
B.V.,  belongs  with  them  in  this  regard,  for  though 
he  depicted  the  horror  of  visions  conjured  up  in 
the  city  streets  in  a  w'ay  unparalleled  in  English 
verse,-  this  is  not  the  same  thing  as  the  romantic 
poet's  repudiation  of  the  city  as  an  unimaginative 
environment. 

Coming  to  more  recent  verse,  we  find  Austin 
Dobson  still  feeling  it  an  anomaly  that  his  muse 
should  prefer  the  city  to  the  country."^  John  David- 
son, also,  was  very  self-conscious  about  his  city 
poets."*  But  as  landscape  painters  are  beginning  to 
see  and  record  the  beauty  in  the  most  congested 
city  districts,  so  poets  have  been  making  their  muse 
more  and  more  at  home  there,  until  our  contempo- 
rary poets  scarcely  stop  to  take  their  residence  in 
the  city  otherwise  than  as  a  matter  of  course.  Alan 
Seeger  cries  out  for  Paris  as  the  ideal  habitat  of 
the  singer. ■'''  Even  New  York  and  Chicago "  are 
beginning  to  serve  as  backgrounds  for  the  poet  fig- 

^  See  E.  L.  Gary,  The  Rossettis,  p.  236. 
'  See  The  City  of  Dreadful  Night. 
'  See  On  London  Stones. 

*  See  Fleet  Street  Eclogues. 

*  See  Paris. 

*  See  Carl  Sandburg,  Chicago  Poems;  Edgar  Lee  Masters, 
The  Loop;  William  Griffith,  City  Pastorals;  Gharles  H. 
Towne,  The  City. 


96  The  Poet's  Poet 

lire.  A  poem  called  A  Winter  Night  reveals  Sara 
Teasdale  as  thoroughly  at  home  in  Manhattan  as 
the  most  bucolic  shepherd  among  his  flocks. 

To  poets'  minds  the  only  unsesthetic  habitat  now- 
adays seems  to  be  the  country  town.  Although 
Edgar  Lee  Masters  writes  what  he  calls  poetry  in- 
spired by  it,  the  reader  of  the  Spoon  River  Anthology 
is  still  disposed  to  sympathize  with  Benjamin  Fraser 
of  Spoon  River,  the  artist  whose  genius  was 
crushed  by  his  ghastly  environment. 

So  manifold,  in  fact,  are  the  attractions  of  the 
world  to  the  modern  poet,  that  the  vagabond  singer 
has  come  into  special  favor  lately.  Of  course  he 
has  appeared  in  English  song  ever  since  the  time  of 
minstrels,  but  usually,  as  in  the  Old  English  poem, 
The  Wanderer,  he  has  been  unhappy  in  his  roving 
life.  Even  so  modern  a  poet  as  Scott  was  in  the 
habit  of  portraying  his  minstrels  as  old  and  home- 
sick.^ But  Byron  set  the  fashion  among  poets  of 
desiring  "a  world  to  roam  through,"  ^  and  the  poet 
who  is  a  wanderer  from  choice  has  not  been  un- 
known since  Byron's  day.^  The  poet  vagabond  of 
to-day,  as  he  is  portrayed  in  Maurice  Hewlitt's  auto- 
biographical novels.  Rest  Harrow  and  Open  Coun- 
try, and  William  H.  Davies'  tramp  poetry,  looks  upon 
his  condition  in  life  as  ideal.'*  Alan  Seeger,  too, 
concurred  in  the  view,  declaring, 

^  See  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel. 
'Epistle  to  Augusta. 

'  Alfred  Dommett  and  George  Borrow  are  no^'able. 
*  See  also  Francis  Carlin,  Denby  the  Rhymer  (1918)  ;  Henry 
Jierbert   Knibbs,   Songs   of  the   Trail    (1920), 


The  Mortal  Coil  97 

Down  the  free  roads  of  human  happiness 

I  frohcked,  poor  of  purse  but  Hght  of  heart.^ 

"Poor  of  purse !"  The  words  recall  us  to  another 
of  the  poet's  quarrels  with  the  world  in  which  he  is 
imprisoned.  Should  the  philanthropist,  as  has  of- 
ten been  suggested,  endow  the  poet  with  an  inde- 
pendent income?  What  a  long  and  glorious  tradi- 
tion would  then  be  broken !  From  Chaucer's  Com- 
plaint to  His  Empty  Purse,  onward,  English  poetry- 
has  borne  the  record  of  its  maker's  poverty.  The 
verse  of  our  period  is  filled  with  names  from  the 
past  that  offer  our  poets  a  noble  precedent  for  their 
destitution, — Homer,  Cervantes,  Camoens,  Spenser, 
Dryden,  Butler,  Johnson,  Otway,  Collins,  Chatter- 
ton,  Burns, — all  these  have  their  want  exposed  in 
nineteeth  and  twentieth  century  verse. 

The  wary  philanthropist,  before  launching  into 
relief  schemes,  may  well  inquire  into  the  cause  of 
such  wretchedness.  The  obvious  answer  is,  of 
course,  that  instead  of  earning  a  livelihood  the  poet 
has  spent  his  time  on  a  vocation  that  makes  no 
pecuniary  return.  Poets  like  to  tell  us,  also,  that 
their  pride,  and  a  fine  sense  of  honour,  hold  them 
back  from  illegitimate  means  of  acquiring  wealth. 
But  tradition  has  it  that  there  are  other  contributing 
causes.  Edmund  C,  Stedman's  Bohemia  reveals  the 
fact  that  the  artist  has  most  impractical  ideas  about 
the  disposal  of  his  income.  He  reasons  that,  since 
the  more  guests  he  has,   the   smaller  the  cost  per 

^Sonnet  to  Sidney. 


98  The  Poet's  Poet 

person,  then  if  he  can  only  entertain  extensively 
enough,  the  cost  per  caput  will  be  nil.  Not  only  so, 
but  the  poet  is  likely  to  lose  sight  completely  of  to- 
morrow's needs,  once  he  has  a  little  ready  cash  on 
hand.  A  few  years  ago,  Philistines  derived  a  good 
deal  of  contemptuous  amusement  from  a  poet's 
statement, 

Had  I  two  loaves  of  bread— ay,  ay ! 
One  would  I  sell  and  daffodils  buy 
To  feed  my  soul.^ 

What  is  to  be  done  with  such  people?  Charity  of- 
ficers are  continually  asking. 

What  relief  measure  can  poets  themselves  sug- 
gest? When  they  are  speaking  of  older  poets,  they 
are  apt  to  offer  no  constructive  criticism,  but  only 
denunciation  of  society.  Their  general  tone  is  that 
of  Burns'  lines  Written  Under  the  Portrait  of  Fer- 
guson: 

Curse  on  ungrateful  man  that  can  be  pleased 
And  yet  can  starve  the  author  of  the  pleasure. 

Occasionally  the  imaginary  poet  who  appears  in  their 
verse  is  quite  as  bitter.  Alexander  Smith's  hero 
protests  against  being  "dungeoned  in  poverty."  One 
of  Richard  Gilder's  poets  warns  the  public, 

You  need  not  weep  for  and  sigh  for  and  saint  me 
After  you've  starved  me  and  driven  me  dead. 
Friends,  do  you  hear?    What  I  want  is  bread.^ 

'  Beauty,  Theodore  Harding  Rand. 
*  The  Young  Poet. 


The  Mortal  Coil  99 

Through  the  thin  veneer  of  the  fictitious  poet  in 
Joaquin  Miller's  Iiia,  the  author  himself  appears, 
raving, 

A  poet !  a  poet  forsooth  !     Fool !  hungry  fool ! 
Would  you  know  what  it  means  to  be  a  poet? 
It  is  to  want  a  friend,  to  want  a  home, 
A  country,  money, — aye,  to  want  a  meal.^ 

But  in  autobiographical  verse,  the  tone  changes, 
and  the  poet  refuses  to  pose  as  a  candidate  for  char- 
ity. Rather,  he  parades  an  ostentatious  horror  of 
filthy  lucre,  only  paralleled  by  his  distaste  for  food. 
Mrs.  Browning  boasts, 

The  Devil  himself  scarce  trusts  his  patented 
Gold-making  art  to  any  who  makes  rhymes, 
But  culls  his  Faustus  from  philosophers 
And  not  from  poets.- 

A  poet  who  can  make  ends  meet  is  practically  con- 
victed of  being  no  true  artist.  Shakespeare  is  so 
solitary  an  exception  to  this  rule,  that  his  mercenary 
aspect  is  a  pure  absurdity  to  his  comrades,  as  Ed- 
win Arlington  Robinson  conceives  of  them.^  In  the 
eighteenth  century  indifference  to  remuneration  was 
not  so  marked,  and  in  poetic  epistles,  forgers  of  the 
couplet  sometimes  concerned  themselves  over  the  re- 
turns,'* but  since  the  romantic  movement  began,  such 

^  See  also  John  Savage,  He  Writes  for  Bread. 
^Aurora  Leigh. 

'  See  Ben  Jonson  Entertains  a  Man  from  Stratford. 
*  See  Advice    to   Mr.   Pope,   John    Hughes;    Economy,    The 
Poet  and  the  Dun,  Shenstone. 


lOO  The  Poet's  Poet 

thought  has  been  held  unworthy.^  In  fact,  even 
in  these  clays,  we  are  comparatively  safe  from 
a  poet's  strike. 

Usually  the  poet  declares  that  as  for  himself,  he 
is  indifferent  to  his  financial  condition.  Praed  speaks 
fairly  for  his  brethren,  when  in  A  Ballad  Teaching 
How  Poetry  Is  Best  Paid  For,  he  represents  their 
terms  as  very  easy  to  meet.  Even  the  melancholy 
Bowles  takes  on  this  subject,  for  once,  a  cheerful 
attitude,  telling  his  visionary  boy, 

Nor  fear,  if  grim  before  thine  eyes 
Pale  worldly  want,  a  spectre  lowers; 
What  is  a  world  of  vanities 
To  a  world  as  fair  as  ours? 

In  the  same  spirit  Burns  belittles  his  poverty,  say- 
ing, in  An  Epistle  to  Davie,  Fellow  Poet: 

To  lie  in  kilns  and  barns  at  e'en 

When  bones  are  crazed,  and  blind  is  thin 

Is  doubtless  great  distress, 

Yet  then  content  would  make  us  blest. 

Shelley,  too,  eschews  wealth,  declaring,  in  Epipsy- 
chidiow, 

Our  simple  life  wants  little,  and  true  taste 
Hires  not  the  pale  drudge  luxury  to  waste 
The  scene  it  would  adorn. 


^  See  To  a  Poet  Abandoning  His  Art,  Barry  Cornwall;  and 
Poets  and  Poets,  T.  E.  Browne.  On  the  other  hand,  see 
Sebastian  Evans,  Religio  Poetce. 


The  Mortal  Coil  ioi 

Later  poetry  is  likely  to  take  an  even  exuberant 
attitude  toward  poverty.^  The  poet's  wealth  of  song 
is  so  great  that  he  leaves  coin  to  those  who  wish  it. 
Indeed  he  often  has  a  superstitious  fear  of  wealth, 
lest  it  take  away  his  delight  in  song.  In  Markham's 
The  Shoes  of  Happiness,  only  the  poet  who  is  too 
poor  to  buy  shoes  possesses  the  secret  of  joy.  With 
a  touching  trust  in  providence,  another  poet  cries, 

Starving,  still  I  smile, 
Laugh  at  want  and  wrong, 
He  is  fed  and  clothed 
To  whom  God  giveth  song.^ 

It  is  doubtful  indeed  that  the  poet  would  have 
his  fate  averted.  Pope's  satirical  coupling  of  want 
and  song,  as  cause  and  effect, 

One  cell  there  is,  concealed  from  vulgar  eye. 
The  cave  of  Poverty  and  Poetry. 
Keen,  hollow  winds  howl  through  the  bleak  recess, 
Emblem  of  music  caused  by  emptiness,^ 

is  accepted  quite  literally  by  later  writers.  Emerson's 
theory  of  compensations  applies  delightfully  here 
as  everywhere,  and  he  meditates  on  the  poet, 

^  See  especially  verse  on  the  Mermaid  group,  as  Tales  of  the 
Mermaid  Inn,  Alfred  Noyes.  See  also  Josephine  Preston 
Peabody,  The  Golden  Shoes;  Richard  Le  Gallienne,  Faery 
Gold;  J.  G.  Saxe,  The  Poet  to  his  Garret;  W.  W.  Gibson, 
The  Empty  Purse;  C.  G.  Halpine,  To  a  Wealthy  Amateur 
Critic;  Simon  Kerl,  Ode  to  Debt,  A  Leaf  of  Autobiography; 
Thomas  Gordon  Hake,  The  Poet's  Feast;  Dana  Burnet,  In  a 
Garret;  Henry  Aylett  Sampson,  Stephen  Phillips  Bankrupt. 

'  Anne   Reeve   Aldrich,  A    Crowned  Poet. 

'  Dunciad. 


102  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  Muse  gave  special  charge 
His  learning  should  be  deep  and  large, — 

His  flesh  should   feel,  his  eyes  should   read 
Every  maxim  of  dreadful  need. 

•  •  •  • 

■By  want  and  pain  God  screeneth  him 
Till  his  appointed  hour.^ 

It  may  appear  doubtful  to  us  w^hether  the  poet 
has  painted  ideal  conditions  for  the  nurture  of  genius 
in  his  picture  of  the  poet's  physical  frame,  his  en- 
vironment, and  his  material  endowment,  inasmuch  as 
the  death  rate  among  young  bards, — imaginary  ones, 
at  least,  is  appalling.     What  can  account  for  it? 

In  a  large  percentage  of  cases,  the  poet's  natural 
frailty  of  constitution  is  to  blame  for  his  early  death, 
of  course,  but  another  popular  explanation  is  that 
the  very  keenness  of  the  poet's  flame  causes  it  to 
burn  out  the  quicker.  Byron  finds  an  early  death 
fitting  to  him, 

For  I  had  the  share  of  life  that  might  have  filled  a 

century, 
Before  its  fourth  in  time  had  passed  me  by.^ 

A  fictitious  poet  looks  back  upon  the  same  sort  of 
life,  and  reflects, 

.  .  .  For  my  thirty  years, 

Dashed   with   sun   and   splashed   with   tears. 

Wan  with  revel,  red  with  wine. 

Other  wiser  happier  men 

Take  the  full  three  score  and  ten.^ 

'  The  Poet. 

^  Epistle  to  Augusta. 

'Alfred  Noyes,  Tales  of  the  Mermaid  Inn. 


The  Mortal  Coil  103 

But  this  richness  of  experience  is  not  inevitably 
bound  up  with  recklessness,  poets  feel.  The  quality 
is  in  such  a  poet  even  as  Emily  Bronte,  of  whom  it 
is  written : 

They  live  not  long  of  thy  pure  fire  composed ; 
Earth  asks  but  mud  of  those  that  will  endure.^ 

Another  cause  of  the  poet's  early  death  is  cer- 
tainly his  fearlessness.  Shelley  prophesies  that  his 
daring  spirit  will  meet  death 

Far   from  the  trembling  throng 
Whose  souls  are  never  to  the  tempest  given. - 

With  the  deaths  of  Rupert  Brooke,  Alan  Seeger, 
Joyce  Kilmer,  and  Francis  Ledwidge,  this  element 
in  the  poet's  disposition  has  been  brought  home  to 
the  public.  Joyce  Kilmer  wrote  back  from  the 
trenches,  "It  is  wrong  for  a  poet  ...  to  be  listen- 
ing to  elevated  trains  when  there  are  screaming 
shells  to  hear  .  .  .  and  the  bright  face  of  danger 
to  dream  about."  ^  And  in  his  article  on  Joyce  Kil- 
mer in  The  Bookman,  Richard  LeGallienne  speaks 
of  young  poets  "touched  with  the  finger  of  a  moon- 
light that  has  written  'fated'  upon  their  brows,"  add- 
ing, "Probably  our  feeling  is  nothing  more  than 
our  realization  that  temperaments  so  vital  and  in- 
tense must  inevitably  tempt  richer  and  swifter  fates 
than  those  less  wild-winged." 

^  Stephen  Phillips,  Emily  Bronte. 

^  Adonais. 

'  Letter  to  his  wife,  March  12,  1918. 


104  The  Poet's  Poet 

It  is  a  question  whether  poets  would  expect  us 
to  condole  with  them  or  to  felicitate  them  upon 
the  short  duration  of  their  subjection  to  mortality. 
Even  when  the  poet  speaks  of  his  early  death  solely 
with  regard  to  its  effect  upon  his  earthly  reputation, 
his  attitude  is  not  wholly  clear.  Much  elegiac  verse 
expresses  such  stereotyped  sorrow  for  a  departed 
bard  that  it  is  not  significant.  In  other  cases,  one 
seems  to  overhear  the  gasp  of  relief  from  a  patron 
whom  time  can  never  force  to  retract  his  superla- 
tive claims  for  his  protege's  promise. 

More  significant  is  a  different  note  which  is  some- 
times heard.  In  Alexander  Smith's  Life  Drama,  it 
is  ostensibly  ironic.     The  critic  muses. 

He  died — 'twas  shrewd : 

And  came  with  all  his  youth  and  unblown  hopes 

On  the  world's  heart,  and  touched  it  into  tears. 

In  Sordello,  likewise,  it  is  the  unappreciative  critic 
who  expresses  this  sort  of  pleasure  in  Eglamor's 
death.  But  this  feeling  has  also  been  expressed 
with  all  seriousness,  as  in  Stephen  Phillip's  Keats: 

I  have  seen  more  glory  in  sunrise 
Than  in  the  deepening  of  azure  noon, 

or  in  Francis  Thompson's  The  Cloud's  Swan  Song: 

I  thought  of  Keats,  that  died  in  perfect  time. 

In  predecease  of  his  just-sickening  song. 

Of  him  that  set,  wrapped  in  his  radiant  rhyme. 

Sunlike  in  sea.     Life  longer  had  been  life  too  long. 


The  Mortal  Coil  105 

Obviously  we  are  in  the  wake  of  the  Rousseau 
theory,  acclimatized  in  English  poetry  by  Words- 
worth's youth  "who  daily  farther  from  the  east  must 
travel."  A  long  array  of  poets  testifies  to  the  doc- 
trine that  a  poet's  first  days  are  his  best.^  Optima 
dies  .  .  .  prima  fugit;  the  note  echoes  and  re- 
echoes through  English  poetry.  Hear  it  in  Arnold's 
Progress  of  Poetry: 

Youth  rambles  on  life's  arid  mount, 
And  strikes  the  rock  and  finds  the  vein. 
And  brings  the  water  from  the  fount. 
The  fount  which  shall  not  flow  again. 

The  man  mature  with  labor  chops 
For  the  bright  stream  a  channel  grand, 
And  sees  not  that  the  sacred  drops 
Ran  oft  and  vanished  out  of  hand. 

And  then  the  old  man  totters  nigh 
And   feebly   rakes   among   the   stones ; 
The  mount  is  mute,  the  channel  dry. 
And  down  he  lays  his  weary  bones. 


*  See  S.  T.  Coleridge,  Youth  and  Age;  J.  G.  Percival, 
Poetry;  William  Cullen  Bryant,  /  Cannot  Forget  with  What 
Fervid  Devotion;  Bayard  Taylor,  The  Return  of  the  God- 
dess; Richard  Watson  Gilder,  To  a  Young  Poet,  The  Poet's 
Secret;  George  Henry  Boker,  To  Bayard  Taylor;  Martin  Far- 
quhar  Tupper,  To  a  Young  Poet;  William  E.  Henley,  Some- 
thing Is  Dead;  Francis  Thompson,  From  the  Night  of  Fore- 
boding; Thomas  Hardy,  In  the  Seventies;  Lewis  Morris,  On 
a  Young  Poet;  Richard  Le  Gallienne,  A  Face  in  a  Book; 
Richard  Middleton,  The  Faithful  Poet,  The  Boy  Poet;  Don 
Marquis,  The  Singer  (1915);  John  Hall  Wheelock,  The  Man 
to  his  Dead  Poet  (1919)  ;  Cecil  Roberts,  The  Youth  of  Beauty 
(1915)  ;  J-  Thorne  Smith,  jr..  The  Lost  Singer  (1920)  ;  Edna 
St.  Vincent  Millay,  To  a  Poet  that  Died  Young, 


io6  The  Poet's  Poet 

But  the  strangle  hold  of  complimentary  verse 
upon  English  poetry,  if  nothing  else,  would  prevent 
this  view  being  unanimously  expressed  there.  For 
in  the  Victorian  period,  poets  who  began  their 
literary  careers  by  prophesying  their  early  decease 
lived  on  and  on.  They  themselves  might  bewail  the 
loss  of  their  gift  in  old  age — in  fact,  it  was  usual 
for  them  to  do  so  ^ — but  it  would  never  do  for  their 
disciples  to  concur  in  the  sentiment.  Consequently 
we  have  a  flood  of  complimentary  verses,  assuring 
the  great  poets  of  their  unaltered  charm. ^  And 
of  course  it  is  all  worth  very  little  as  indicating  the 
writer's  attitude  toward  old  age.  Yet  the  fact  that 
Landor  was  still  singing  as  he  "tottered  on  into 
his  ninth  decade," — that  Browning,  Tennyson, 
Swinburne,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Holmes,  and 
Whitman  continued  to  feel  the  stir  of  creation  when 
their  hair  was  hoary,  may  have  had  a  genuine  in- 
fluence on  younger  writers. 

Greater  significance  attaches  to  the  fact  that  some 

^  See  Scott,  Farewell  to  the  Muse;  Landor,  Dull  is  my 
Verse;  J.  G.  Percival,  Invocation;  Matthew  Arnold,  Grow- 
ing Old;  Longfellow,  My  Books;  O.  W.  Holmes,  The  Silent 
Melody;  C.  W.  Stoddard,  The  Minstrel's  Harp;  P.  H.  Hayne, 
The  Broken  Chords;  J.  C.  MacNiel,  A  Prayer ;  Harvey  Hub- 
bard, The  Old  Minstrel. 

^  See  Swinburne,  Age  and  Song,  The  Centenary  of  Landor, 
Statue  of  Victor  Hugo;  O.  W.  Holmes,  Whittier  s  Eightieth 
Birthday,  Bryant's  Seventieth  Birthday;  E.  E.  Stedman,  Ad 
Vatem;  P.  H.  Hayne,  To  Longfellow;  Richard  Gilder,  Joco- 
seria;  M.  F.  Tupper,  To  the  Poet  of  Memory;  Edmund  Gosse, 
To  Lord  Tennyson  on  his  Eightieth  Birthday;  Alfred  Noyes, 
Ode  for  the  Seventieth  Birthday  of  Szvinburnc ;  Alfred  Austin, 
The  Poet's  Eightieth  Birthday;  Lucy  Larcom,  /.  G.  Whittier; 
Mary  Clemmer,  To  Whittier;  Percy  Mackaye,  Browning  to 
Ben  Ezra. 


The  Mortal  Coil  107 

of  the  self-revealing  verse  lamenting  the  decay  of 
inspiration  in  old  age  is  equivocal,  as  Landor's 

Dull  is  my  verse :  not  even  thou 
Who  movest  many  cares  away 
From  this  lone  breast  and  weary  brow 
Canst  make,  as  once,  its  fountains  play; 
No,  nor  those  gentle  words  that  now 
Support  my  heart  to  hear  thee  say, 
The  bird  upon  the  lonely  bough 
Sings  sweetest  at  the  close  of  day. 

It  is,  of  course,  even  more  meaningful  when  the 
aged  poet,  disregarding  convention,  frankly  asserts 
the  desirability  of  long  life  for  his  race.  Browning, 
despite  the  sadness  of  the  poet's  age  recorded  in 
Cleon  and  the  Prologue  to  Aslando,  should  doubtless 
be  remembered  for  his  belief  in 

The  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  was  made, 

as  applied  to  poets  as  well  as  to  other  men.  In 
America  old  age  found  its  most  enthusiastic  advo- 
cate in  Walt  Whitman,  who  in  lines  To  Get  the 
Final  Lilt  of  Songs  indicated  undiminished  confi- 
dence in  himself  at  eighty.  Bayard  Taylor,^  too, 
and  Edward  Dowden,-  were  not  dismayed  by  their 
longevity. 

But  we  are  most  concerned,  naturally,  with  wholly 
impersonal  verse,  and  in  it  the  aged  poet  is  never 
wholly  absent  from  English  thought.    As  the  youth- 

*  See  My  Prologue. 
'  See  The  Mage. 


io8  The  Poet's  Poet 

ful  singer  suggests  the  southland,  so  the  aged  bard 
seems  indigenous  to  the  north.  It  seems  inevitable 
that  Gray  should  depict  the  Scotch  bard  as  old/  and 
that  Scott's  minstrels  should  be  old.  Campbell,  too, 
follows  the  Scotch  tradition.^  It  is  the  prophetic 
power  of  these  fictional  poets,  no  doubt,  that  makes 
age  seem  essential  to  them.  The  poet  in  Campbell's 
poem  explains, 

'Tis  the  sunset  of  life  gives  me  mystical  lore. 

Outside  of  Scotch  poetry  one  finds,  occasionally, 
a  similar  faith  in  the  old  poet.  Mrs.  Browning's 
observation  tells  her  that  maturity  alone  can  express 
itself  with  youthful  freshness.     Aurora  declares, 

I  count  it  strange  and  hard  to  understand 
That  nearly  all  young  poets  should  write  old. 
...  It  may  be  perhaps 
Such  have  not  settled  long  and  deep  enough 
In  trance  to  attain  to  clairvoyance,  and  still 
The  memory  mixes  with  the  vision,  spoils 
And  works  it  turbid.     Or  perhaps  again 
In  order  to  discover  the  Muse  Sphinx 
The  melancholy  desert  must  sweep  around 
Behind  you  as  before. 

Aurora  feels,  indeed,  that  the  poet's  gift  is  not  proved 
till  age.     She  sighs,  remembering  her  own  youth, 

Alas,  near  all  the  birds 

Will  sing  at  dawn, — and  yet  we  do  not  take 

The  chaffering  swallow  for  the  holy  lark. 

^  The  Bard. 

'  See  Lochiel's  Warning. 


The  Mortal  Coil  109 

Coinciding  with  this  feeling  is  Rossetti's  sentiment : 

.  .  .  Many  men  are  poets  in  their  youth, 

But  for  one  sweet-strung  soul  the  wires  prolong 

Even  through  all  age  the  indomitable  song.^ 

Alice  Meynell,"  too,  and  Richard  Watson  Gilder  ^ 
feel  that  increasing  power  of  song  comes  with  age. 
It  is  doubtless  natural  that  the  passionate  ro- 
mantic poets  insisted  upon  the  poet's  youth,  while 
the  thoughtful  Victorians  often  thought  of  him  as 
old.  For  one  is  born  with  nerves,  and  it  does  not 
take  long  for  them  to  wear  out;  on  the  other  hand 
a  great  deal  of  experience  is  required  before  one  can 
even  begin  to  think  significantly.  Accordingly  one 
is  not  surprised,  in  the  turbulent  times  of  Eliza- 
beth, to  find  Shakespeare,  at  thirty,  asserting, 

In  me  thou  seest  the  glowing  of  such  fire 
As  on  the  ashes  of  his  youth  doth  lie, 

and  conversely  it  seems  fitting  that  a  De  Senectiite 
should  come  from  an  Augustan  period.  As  for  the 
attitude  toward  age  of  our  own  day, — the  detesta- 
tion of  age  expressed  by  Alan  Seeger  *  and  Rujjert 
Brooke, '"^ — the  complaint  of  Francis  Ledwidge,  at 
twenty-six,  that  years  are  robbing  him  of  his  inspira- 
tion,*^— that,  to  their  future  readers,  will  only  mean 

'  Genius  in  Beauty. 

'  See  To  any  Poet. 

'  See  Life  is  a  Bell. 

*  See  There  Was  a  Youth  Around  Whose  Early  Way. 

'See  The  Funeral  of  Youth:  Threnody. 

'  See  Crowing  Old,  Youth, 


no  The  Poet's  Poet 

that  they  lived  in  days  of  much  feeling  and  action, 
and  that  ihey  died  young.^  As  the  world  subsides, 
after  its  cataclysm,  into  contemplative  revery,  it  is 
inevitable  that  poets  will,  for  a  time,  once  more  con- 
ceive as  their  ideal,  not  a  singer  aflame  with  youth 
and  passion,  but  a  poet  of  rich  experience  and  pro- 
found reflection. 

White-bearded  and  with  eyes  that  look  afar 
From  their  still  region  of  perpetual  snow, 
Beyond  the  little  smokes  and  stirs  of  men.^ 

^  One  of  the  war  poets,  Joyce  Kilmer,  was  already  changing 
his  attitude  at  thirty.  Compare  his  juvenile  verse,  "It  is  not 
good  for  poets  to  grow  old,"  with  the  later  poem.  Old  Poets. 

^  James  Russell  Lowell,  Thomuald's  Lay. 


Ill 

THE  POET  AS  LOVER 

"T^  O  the  Phccdriis  and  the  Symposium  leave  any- 
^^  thing  to  be  said  on  the  relationship  of  love  and 
poetry?  In  the  last  analysis,  probably  not.  The 
poet,  however,  is  not  one  to  keep  silence  because  of 
a  dearth  of  new  philosophical  conceptions.  As  he 
discovers,  with  ever  fresh  wonder,  the  power  of 
love  as  muse,  each  new  poet,  in  turn,  is  wont  to  pour 
his  gratitude  for  his  inspiration  into  song,  unde- 
terred by  the  fact  that  love  has  received  many  en- 
comiums before. 

It  is  not  strange  that  this  hymn  should  be  broken 
by  rude  taunts  on  the  part  of  the  uninitiated. 

Saynt  Idiote,  Lord  of  these  foles  alle, 

Chaucer's  Troilus  called  Love,  long  ago,  and  the 
general  public  has  been  no  less  free  with  this  char- 
acterization in  the  last  century  than  in  the  four- 
teenth. Nor  is  it  merely  that  part  of  the  public 
which  associates  all  verse  with  sentimentality,  and 
flees  from  it  as  from  a  contagion,  which  thus  sneers 
at  the  praise  lovers  give  to  their  divinity.  On  the 
contrary,  certain  young  aspirants  to  the  poet's 
laurel,  feeling  that  the  singer's  indebtedness  to  love 

is  an  overworked  theme,  have  tried,  like  the  non- 

III 


112  The  Poet's  Poet 

lover  of  the  Phcedrus,  to  charm  the  literary  public 
by  the  novelty  of  a  different  profession.  As  the 
non-lover  of  classic  Greece  v^^as  so  fluent  in  his 
periods  that  Socrates  and  Phsedrus  narrowly  escaped 
from  being-  overwhelmed  by  his  much  speaking,  so 
the  non-lover  of  the  present  time  says  much  for 
himself. 

In  the  first  place,  our  non-lover  may  assure  us, 
the  nature  of  love  is  such  that  it  involves  contempt 
for  the  life  of  a  bard.  For  love  is  a  mad  pursuit 
of  life  at  first  hand,  in  its  most  engrossing  aspect, 
and  it  renders  one  deaf  and  blind  to  all  but  the  ob- 
ject of  the  chase;  while  poetry  is,  as  Plato  points 
out,^  only  a  pale  and  lifeless  imitation  of  the  ardors 
and  delights  which  the  lover  enjoys  at  first  hand. 
Moreover,  one  who  attempts  to  divide  his  atten- 
tion between  the  muse  and  an  earthly  mistress,  is 
likely  not  only  to  lose  the  favor  of  the  former,  but, 
as  the  ubiquity  of  the  rejected  poet  in  verse  indi- 
cates, to  lose  the  latter  as  well,  because  his  tempera- 
ment will  incline  him  to  go  into  retirement  and 
meditate  upon  his  lady's  charms,  when  he  should 
be  flaunting  his  own  in  her  presence.  It  will  not  be 
long,  indeed,  before  he  has  so  covered  the  object  of 
his  affection  with  the  leafage  of  his  fancy,  that  she 
ceases  to  have  an  actual  existence  for  him  at  all.  The 
non-lover  may  remind  us  that  even  so  ardent  an  ad- 
vocate of  love  as  Mrs.  Browning  voices  this  danger, 
confessing,  in  Sonnets  of  the  Portuguese,^ 

*  See  the  Republic  X,  §  599-601 ;  and  Phadrus,  §  248. 
'Sonnet  XXIX. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  H3 

My  thoughts  do  twine  and  bud 
About  thee,  as  wild  vines  about  a  tree 
Put  out  broad  leaves,  and  soon  there's  nought  to  see 
Except  the  straggling  green  that  hides  the  wood. 

The  non-lover  may  also  recall  to  our  minds  the 
notorious  egotism  and  self-sufficiency  of  the  poet, 
which  seem  incompatible  with  the  humility  and  in- 
satiable yearning  of  the  lover.  He  exults  in  the 
declaration  of  Keats, 

My  solitude  is  sublime, — for,  instead  of  what  I 
have  described  (t.  c,  domestic  bliss)  there  is  sublimity 
to  welcome  me  home;  the  roaring  of  the  wind  is  my 
wife ;  and  the  stars  through  the  windowpanes  are  my 
children ;  the  mighty  abstract  idea  of  beauty  in  all 
things,  I  have,  stifles  the  more  divided  and  minute 
domestic  happiness.^ 

Borne  aloft  by  his  admiration  for  this  passage,  the 
non-lover  may  himself  essay  to  be  sublime.  He 
may  picture  to  us  the  frozen  heights  on  which  genius 
resides,  where  the  air  is  too  rare  for  earthly  af- 
fection. He  may  declare  that  Keats'  Grecian  Urn  is 
a  symbol  of  all  art,  which  must  be 

All  breathing  human  passion  far  above. 

He  will  assert  that  the  mission  of  the  poet  is  "to  see 
life  steadily  and  see  it  whole,"  a  feat  which  is  im- 
possible if  the  worship  of  one  figure  out  of  the 
multitude  is  allowed  to  distort  relative  values,  and 
to  throw  his  view  out  of  perspective. 

*  Letter  to  George   Keats,  October  31,   1818. 


114  The  Poet's  Poet 

Finally,  the  enemy  of  love  may  call  as  witnesses 
poets  whom  he  fancies  he  has  led  astray.  Strangely 
enough,  considering  the  dedication  of  the  Ring  and 
the  Book,  he  is  likely  to  give  most  conspicuous  place 
among  these  witnesses  to  Browning.  Like  passages 
of  Holy  Writ,  lines  from  Browning  have  been  used 
as  the  text  for  whatever  harangue  a  new  theorist 
sees  fit  to  give  us.  In  Youth  and  Art,  the  non-lover 
will  point  out  the  characteristic  attitude  of  young 
people  who  are  "married  to  their  art,"  and  conse- 
quently have  no  capacity  for  other  affection.  In 
Pauline,  he  will  gloat  over  the  hero's  confession 
that  he  is  inept  in  love  because  he  is  concerned  with 
his  perceptions  rather  than  with  their  objects,  and 
his  explanation, 

I  am  made  up  of  an  intensest  life; 

Of  a  most  clear  idea  of  consciousness 

Of  self  .  .  . 

And  I  can  love  nothing, — and  this  dull  truth 

Has  come  at  last :  but  sense  supplies  a  love 

Encircling  me  and  mingling  with  my  life. 

He  will  point  out  that  Sordello  is  another  example 
of  the  same  type,  for  though  Sordello  is  ostensibly 
the  lover  of  Palma,  he  really  finds  nothing  outside 
himself  worthy  of  his  unbounded  adoration.^  Turn- 
ing to  Tennyson,  in  Lucretius  the  non-lover  will  note 
the  tragic  death  of  the  hero  that  grows  out  of  the 

^  Compare  Browning's  treatment  of  Sordello  with  the  con- 
ventional treatment  of  him  as  lover,  in  Sordello,  by  Mrs.  W. 
Buck   (1837). 


The  Poet  as  Lover  115 

asceticism  in  love  engendered  by  his  absorption  in 
composition.  With  the  greatest  pride  the  enemy  of 
love  will  point  to  his  popularity  in  the  1890's,  when 
the  artificial  and  heartless  artist  enjoyed  his  greatest 
vogue.  As  his  most  scintillating  advocate  he  will 
choose  Oscar  Wilde.  Assuring  us  of  many  prose 
passages  in  his  favor,  he  will  read  to  us  the  ex- 
pression of  conflict  between  love  and  art  in  Flozver 
of  Love,  where  Wilde  exclaims, 

I  have  made  my  choice,  have  lived  my  poems,  and 
though  my  youth  is  gone  in  wasted  days, 

I  have  found  the  lover's  crown  of  myrtle  better  than 
the  poet's  crown  of  bays, 

and  he  will  read  the  record  of  the  same  sense  of  con- 
flict, in  difTerent  mood,  expressed  in  the  sonnet 
Helas: 

To  drift  with  every  passion  till  my  soul 
Is  a  stringed  lute  on  which  all  winds  can  play, 
Is  it  for  this  that  I  have  given  away 
Mine  ancient  wisdom  and  austere  control? 
Methinks  my  life  is  a  twice-written  scroll 
Scrawled  over  on  some  boyish  holiday 
With  idle  songs  for  pipe  and  virelai, 
Which  do  but  mar  the  secret  of  the  whole. 
Surely  there  was  a  time  I  might  have  trod 
The  sunlit  heights,  and  from  life's  dissonance 
Struck  one  clear  chord  to  reach  the  ears  of  God. 
Is  that  time  dead  ?    Lo,  with  a  little  rod 
I  did  but  touch  the  honey  of  romance. 
And  must  I  lose  a  soul's  inheritance? 


ii6  The  Poet's  Poet 

And  yet,  when  the  non-lover  has  finally  arrived 
at  the  peroration  of  his  defense,  we  may  remain 
unshaken  in  our  conviction  that  from  the  Song  of 
Solomon  to  the  Love  Songs  of  Sara  Teasdale,  the 
history  of  poetry  constitutes  an  almost  unbroken 
hymn  to  the  power  of  love,  "the  poet,  and  the  source 
of  poetry  in  others,"  ^  as  Agathon  characterized 
him  at  the  banquet  in  Love's  honour.  Within  the 
field  of  our  especial  inquiry,  the  last  century,  we  may 
rest  assured  that  there  is  no  true  poet  whose  work, 
rightly  interpreted,  is  out  of  tune  with  this  general 
acclaim.  Even  Browning  and  Oscar  Wilde  are  to 
be  saved,  although,  it  may  be,  only  as  by  fire. 

The  influence  of  love  upon  poetry,  which  we  are 
assuming  with  such  a  priori  certainty,  is  effected  in 
various  ways.  The  most  obvious,  of  course,  is  by 
affording  new  subject  matter.  The  confidence  of 
Shakespeare, 

How  can  my  muse  want  subject  to  invent 

While  thou  dost  breathe,  that  pourest  into  my  verse 

Thine  own  sweet  argument  ? 

is  at  least  as  characteristic  of  the  nineteenth  as  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  The  depletion  of  our  lyric 
poetry,  if  everything  relating  to  the  singer's  love 
affairs  were  omitted,  is  appalling  even  to  contem- 
plate. Yet,  if  this  were  the  extent  of  love's  in- 
fluence upon  poetry,  one  would  have  to  class  it,  in 
kind  if  not  in  degree,  with  any  number  of  other 

*  The  Symposium  of  Plato,  §  196. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  117 

personal  experiences  that  have  thrilled  the  poet  to 
composition. 

The  scope  of  love's  influence  is  widened  when  one 
reflects  upon  its  efficacy  as  a  prize  held  up  before  the 
poet,  spurring  him  on  to  express  himself.  In  this 
aspect  poetry  is  often  a  form  of  spiritual  display 
comparable  to  the  gay  plumage  upon  the  birds  at 
mating  season.  In  the  case  of  women  poets,  verse 
often  affords  an  essentially  refined  and  lady-like 
manner  of  expressing  one's  sentiments  toward  a 
possible  suitor.  The  convention  so  charmingly  ex- 
pressed in  William  Morris'  lines,  Rhyme  Shyeth 
Shame,  seems  to  be  especially  grateful  to  them.  At 
times  the  ruse  fails,  as  a  writer  has  recently  ad- 
mitted: 

All  sing  it  now,  all  praise  its  artless  art, 

But  ne'er  the  one  for  whom  the  song  was  made,^ 

but  perhaps  the  worth  of  the  poetry  is  not  affected 
by  the  stubbornness  of  its  recipient.  Sara  Teasdale 
very  delicately  names  her  anthology  of  love  poems 
by  women.  The  Answering  Voice,  but  half  the  poems 
reveal  the  singer  speaking  first,  while  a  number  of 
them  show  her  expressing  an  open-minded  attitude 
toward  any  possible  applicant  for  her  hand  among 
her  readers.  But  it  is  not  merely  for  its  efficacy 
as  a  matrimonial  agency  that  poets  are  indebted  to 
love. 

Since  the  nineteenth  century  is  primarily  the  age 

*  Edith  Thomas,   Vos  tion  Nobis. 


ii8  The  Poet's  Poet 

of  the  love  story,  personal  experience  of  love  has 
been  invaluable  to  the  poet  in  a  third  way.  The 
taste  of  the  time  has  demanded  that  the  poet  sing 
of  the  tender  theme  almost  exclusively,  whether  in 
dramatic,  lyric  or  narrative,  whether  in  his- 
torical or  fictional  verse.  This  is,  of  course,  one 
reason  that,  wherever  the  figure  of  a  bard  appears 
in  verse,  he  is  almost  always  portrayed  as  a  lover. 
Not  to  illustrate  exhaustively,  three  of  the  most 
widely  read  poems  with  poet  heroes,  of  the  beginning, 
middle  and  end  of  the  century  respectively,  i.  e., 
Moore's  Lalla  Rookh,  Mrs.  Browning's  Lady  Ger- 
aldine's  Courtship,  and  Coventry  Patmore's  The  An- 
gel in  the  House,  all  depend  for  plot  interest  upon 
their  hero's  implication  in  a  love  affair.  The  au- 
thors' love  affairs  were  invaluable,  no  doubt,  since 
a  poet  is  not  be  expected  to  treat  adequately  a  pas- 
sion which  he  has  not  experienced  himself.  It  is 
true  that  one  hears  from  time  to  time,  notably  in 
the  1890's,  that  the  artist  should  remain  apart  from, 
and  coldly  critical  of  the  emotions  he  portrays.  But 
this  is  not  the  typical  attitude  of  our  period.  When 
one  speaks  thus,  he  is  usually  thought  to  be  confus- 
ing the  poet  with  the  literary  man,  who  writes  from 
calculation  rather  than  from  inspiration.  The  dic- 
tum of  Aristotle,  "Those  who  feel  emotion  are  most 
convincing  through  a  natural  sympathy  with  the 
characters  they  represent,"  ^  has  appeared  self-evi- 
dent to  most  critics  of  our  time. 

^Poetics  XVII,  Butcher's  translation. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  119 

But  the  real  question  of  inspiration  by  love  goes 
deeper  and  is  connected  with  Aristotle's  further 
suggestion  that  poetry  involves  "a  strain  of  mad- 
ness," a  statement  which  we  are  wont  to  interpret 
as  meaning  that  the  poet  is  led  by  his  passions  rather 
than  by  his  reason.  This  constitutes  the  gist  of  the 
whole  dispute  between  the  romanticist  and  the  clas- 
sicist, and  our  poets  are  such  ardent  devotees  of 
love  as  their  muse,  simply  because,  in  spite  of  other 
short-lived  fads,  the  temper  of  the  last  century  has 
remained  predominantly  romantic.  It  is  obvious 
that  the  idea  of  love  as  a  distraction  and  a  curse 
is  the  offspring  of  classicism.  If  poetry  is  the  work 
of  the  reason,  then  equilibrium  of  soul,  which  is 
so  sorely  upset  by  passionate  love,  is  doubtless  very 
necessary.  But  the  romanticist  represents  the  poet, 
not  as  one  drawing  upon  the  resources  within  his 
mind,  but  as  the  vessel  filled  from  without.  His  af- 
flatus comes  upon  him  and  departs,  without  his  con- 
trol or  understanding.  Poetical  inspiration,  to  such 
a  temperament,  naturally  assumes  the  shape  of  pas- 
sion. Bryant's  expression  of  this  point  of  view  is 
so  typical  of  the  general  attitude  as  to  seem  merely 
commonplace.    He  tells  us,  in  The  Poet, 

No  smooth  array  of  phrase. 

Artfully  sought  and  ordered  though   it  be, 

Which  the  cold  rhymer  lays 

Upon  his  page  languid  industry 

Can  wake  the  listless  pulse  to  livelier  speed. 


120  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  secret  wouldst  thou  know 

To  touch  the  heart  or  fire  the  blood  at  will  ? 

Let  thine  own  eyes  o'erflow  ; 

Let  thy  lips  quiver  with  the  passionate  thrill. 

Seize  the  great  thought,  ere  yet  its  power  be  past, 

And  bind,  in  words,  the  fleet  emotion  fast. 

Coleridge's  comprehension  of  this   fact  led  him  to 

cry,  "Love  is  the  vital  air  of  my  genius."  ^ 

All  this,  considering  the  usual  subject-matter  of 
poetry,  is  perhaps  only  saying  that  the  poet  must 
be  sincere.  The  mathematician  is  most  sincere 
when  he  uses  his  intellect  exclusively,  but  a  reasoned 
portrayal  of  passion  is  bound  to  falsify,  for  it  leads 
one  insensibly  either  to  understate,  or  to  burlesque, 
or  to  indulge  in  a  psychopathic  analysis  of  emotion. - 

Accordingly,  our  poets  have  not  been  slow  to  re- 
mind us  of  their  passionate  temperaments.  Landor, 
perhaps,  may  oblige  us  to  dip  into  his  biography  in 
order  to  verify  our  thesis  that  the  poet  is  invariably 
passionate,  but  in  many  cases  this  state  of  things 
is  reversed,  the  poet  being  wont  to  assure  us  that 
the  conventional  incidents  of  his  life  afford  no 
gauge  of  the  ardors  within  his  soul.  Thus  Words- 
worth solemnly  assures  us. 

Had  I  been  a  writer  of  love  poetry,  it  would  have 
been  natural  to  me  to  write  with  a  degree  of  warmth 
which  could  hardly  have  been  approved  by  my  prin- 
ciples, and  which  might  have  been  undesirable  for  the 
reader.^ 

*  Letter  to  his  wife,  March  12,  1799. 

'  Of  the  latter  type  of  poetry  a  good  example  is  Edgar  Lee 
Masters'  Monsieur  D —  and  the  Psycho- Analyst. 

'See  Arthur  Symons,  The  Romantic  Movement,  p.  92  (from 
Myers,  Life   of   Wordsworth). 


The  Poet  as  Lover  121 

Such  boasting  is  equally  characteristic  of  our  staid 
American  poets,  who  shrink  from  the  imputation 
that  their  orderly  lives  are  the  result  of  tem- 
peramental incapacity  for  unrestraint.^  In  differ- 
ing mode,  Swinburne's  poetry  is  perhaps  an  ex- 
pression of  the  same  attitude.  The  ultra-erotic 
verse  of  that  poet  somehow  suggests  a  wild  hulla- 
baloo raised  to  divert  our  attention  from  the  fact 
that  he  was  constitutionally  incapable  of  experienc- 
ing passion. 

Early  in  the  century,  something  approaching  the 
Wordsworthian  doctrine  of  emotion  recollected  in 
tranquillity  was  in  vogue,  as  regards  capacity  for 
passion.  The  Byronic  hero  is  one  whose  affections 
have  burned  themselves  out,  and  who  employs  the 
last  worthless  years  of  his  life  wTiting  them  up. 
Childe  Harold  is 

Grown  aged  in  this  world  of  woe, 
In  deeds,  not  years,  piercing  the  depths  of  life, 
So  that  no  wonder  waits  him,  nor  below 
Can  love,  or  sorrow,  fame,  ambition,  strife, 
Cut  to  his  heart  again  with  the  keen  knife 
Of  silent,  sharp  endurance. 

The  very  imitative  hero  of  Praed's  The  Trouha- 
dour,    after    disappointment    in    several    successive 

^  Thus  Whittier,  in  My  Namesake,  says  of  himself. 

Few   guessed    beneath    his   aspect   grave 

What  passions  strove  in  chains. 
Also  Bayard  Taylor  retorts  to  those  who  taunt  him  with  lack 
of  passion, 

But    you    are    blind,    and    to    the    blind 

The  touch  of  ice  and  fire  is  one. 
The   same   defense   is   made   by   Richard   W.    Gilder   in    lines 
entitled  Our  Elder  Poets. 


122  The  Poet's  Poet 

amours,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six  dismisses  passion 
forever.     We  are  assured  that 

The  joys  that  wound,  the  pains  that  bless, 
Were  all,  were  all  departed. 
And  he  was  wise  and  passionless 
And  happy  and  cold-hearted. 

The  popularity  of  this  sort  of  poet  was,  however, 
ephemeral.  Of  late  years  poets  have  shown  noth- 
ing but  contempt  for  their  brothers  who  attempt  to 
sing  after  their  passion  has  died  away.  It  seems 
likely,  beside,  that  instead  of  giving  an  account  of 
his  genius,  the  depleted  poet  depicts  his  passionless 
state  only  as  a  ruse  to  gain  the  sympathy  of  his 
readers,  reminding  them  how  much  greater  he  might 
have  been  if  he  had  not  wantonly  wasted  his  emo- 
tions. 

One  is  justified  in  asking  why,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  poet  should  not  be  one  who,  instead  of  spending 
his  love  on  a  finite  mistress,  should  devote  it  all  to 
poetry.  The  bard  asks  us  to  believe  that  love  of 
poetry  is  as  thrilling  a  passion  as  any  earthly  one. 
His  usual  emotions  are  portrayed  in  Alexander 
Smith's  Life  Drama,  where  the  hero  agonizes  for 
relief  from  his  too  ardent  love : 

O  that  my  heart  was  quiet  as  a  grave 

Asleep  in  moonlight! 

For,  as  a  torrid  sunset  boils  with  gold 

Up  to  the  zenith,  fierce  within  my  soul 

A  passion  burns  from  basement  to  the  cope. 

Poesy,  poesy! 


The  Poet  as  Lover  123 

But  one  who  imagines  that  this  passion  can  exist 
in  the  soul  wholly  unrelated  to  any  other,  is  con- 
fusing poetry  with  religion,  or  possibly  with  philos- 
ophy. The  medieval  saint  was  pure  in  proportion 
as  he  died  to  the  life  of  the  senses.  This  is  likewise 
the  state  of  the  philosopher  described  in  the  Phcudo. 
But  beauty,  unlike  wisdom  and  goodness,  is  not  to 
be  apprehended  abstractly;  ideal  beauty  is  super- 
sensual,  to  be  sure,  but  the  way  to  vision  of  it  is 
through  the  senses.  Without  doubt  one  occasionally 
finds  asceticism  preached  to  the  poet  in  verse.  One 
of  our  minor  American  poets  declares, 

The  bard  who  yields  to  flesh  his  emotion 
Knows  naught  of  the  frenzy  divine.^ 

But  this  is  not  the  genuine  poet's  point  of  view.  In 
so  far  as  he  is  a  Platonist — and  "all  poets  are  more 
or  less  Platonists"  " — the  poet  is  led  upward  to  the 
love  of  ideal  beauty  through  its  incarnations  in  the 
world  of  sense.  Thus  in  one  of  the  most  Platonic 
of  our  poems,  G.  E.  Woodberry's  Agathon,  Eros 
says  of  the  hero,  who  is  the  young  poet  of  the 
Symposium, 

A  spirit  of  joy  he  is,  to  beauty  vowed, 
Made  to  be  loved,  and  every  sluggish  sense 
In  him  is  amorous  and  passionate. 
Whence  danger  is ;  therefore  I  seek  him  out 
So  with  pure  thought  and  care  of  things  divine 
To  touch  his  soul  that  it  partake  the  gods. 

*  Passion,  by  Elizabeth  CTieney.  But  compare  Keats'  protest 
against  the  poet's  abstract  love,  in  the  fourth  book  o^ 
Endymion. 

'  H.  B.  Alexander,  Poetry  and  the  Individual,  p.  46. 


124  The  Poet's  Poet 

This  does  not  imply  that  romantic  love  is  the 
only  avenue  to  ideal  beauty,  Rupert  Brooke's  The 
Great  Lover  might  dissipate  such  an  idea,  by  its 
picture  of  childlike  and  omnivorous  taste  for  sensu- 
ous beauty. 

These  I  have  loved, 

Brooke  begins, 

White  plates  and  cups,  clean  gleaming, 
Ringed  with  blue  lines ;  and  feathery,  faery  dust ; 
Wet  roofs,   beneath  the  lamplight ;   the   strong  crust 
Of  friendly  bread  ;  and  many  tasting  food  ; 
Rainbows,  and  the  blue  bitter  smoke  of  wood. 

And  so  on  he  takes  us,  apparently  at  random,  through 
the  v^hole  range  of  his  sense  impressions.  But  the 
main  difficulty  with  having  no  more  than  such  scat- 
tered and  promiscuous  impressionability  is  that  it  is 
likely  to  result  in  poetry  that  is  a  mere  confusion 
of  color  without  design,  unless  the  poet  is  subject 
to  the  unifying  influence  of  a  great  passion,  which, 
far  from  destroying  perspective,  as  was  hinted  previ- 
ously, affords  a  fixed  standard  by  which  to  gauge 
the  relative  values  of  other  impressions.  Of  course 
the  exceptionally  idealistic  poet,  who  is  conscious 
of  a  religious  ideal,  can  say  with  Milton,  "I  am  wont 
day  and  night  to  seek  the  idea  of  beauty  through 
all  the  forms  and  faces  of  things  (for  many  are  the 
shapes  of  things  divine)  and  to  follow  it  leading  me 
on  with  certain  assured  traces."  ^  To  him  there  is  no 
need  of  the  unifying  influence  of  romantic  love.  In 
^  Prose  Works,  Vol.  I,  Letter  VII,  Symmons  ed. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  125 

his  case  the  mission  of  a  strong  passion  is  rather  to 
humanize  the  ideal,  lest  it  become  purely  philosophi- 
cal (as  that  of  G.  E.  Woodberry  is  in  danger  of 
doing)  or  purely  ethical,  as  is  the  case  of  our  New 
England  poets.  On  the  other  hand,  to  the  poet  who 
denies  the  ideal  element  in  life  altogether,  the  uni- 
fying influence  of  love  is  indispensable.  Such  deeply 
tragic  poetry  as  that  of  James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  for 
instance,  which  asserts  Macbeth's  conclusion  that 
life  is  "a  tale  told  by  an  idiot,"  is  saved  from  utter 
chaos  sufficiently  to  keep  its  poetical  character,  only 
because  the  memory  of  his  dead  love  gives  Thom- 
son a  conception  of  eternal  love  and  beauty  by  which 
to  gauge  his  hopeless  despair. 

In  addition,  our  poets  are  wont  to  agree  with 
their  father  Spenser  that  the  beauty  of  a  beloved 
person  is  not  to  be  placed  in  the  same  class  as  the 
beauty  of  the  world  of  nature.  Spenser  argues  that 
the  spiritual  beauty  of  a  lady,  rather  than  her  out- 
ward appearance,  causes  her  lover's  perturbation. 
He  inquires : 

Can  proportion  of  the  outward  part 
Move  such  affection  in  the  inward  mind 
That  it  can  rob  both  sense  and  reason  blind? 
Why  do  not  then  the  blossoms  of  the  field, 
Which  are  arrayed  with  much  more  orient  hue 
And  to  the  sense  most  daintie  odors  yield, 
Work  like  impression  in  the  looker's  view  ?  ^ 

Modern  theorists,  who  would  no  doubt  despise  the 
quaintly  idealistic  mode  of  Spenser's  expression,  yet 

^  An  Hymne  in  Honour  of  Beautie. 


126  The  Poet's  Poet 

express  much  the  same  view  in  asserting  that  ro- 
mantic excitement  is  a  stimulus  which  keys  all  the 
senses  to  a  higher  pitch,  thus  dispersing  one's  amo- 
rousness over  all  creation.  The  love  celebrated  in 
Brooke's  The  Great  Lover,  they  declare,  cannot  be 
compared  with  that  of  his  more  conventional  love 
poems,  simply  because  the  one  love  is  the  cause  of 
the  other.  Such  heightened  sensuous  impression- 
ability is  celebrated  in  much  of  our  most  beautiful 
love  poetry  of  to-day,  notably  in  Sara  Teasdale's. 

It  may  be  that  this  intensity  of  perception  en- 
gendered by  love  is  its  most  poetical  effect.  Much 
verse  pictures  the  poet  as  a  flamelike  spirit  kindled 
by  love  to  a  preternaturally  vivid  apprehension  of 
life  for  an  instant,  before  love  dies  away,  leaving 
him  ashes.  Again  and  again  the  analogy  is  pointed 
out  between  Shelley's  spirit  and  the  leaping  flames 
that  consumed  his  body.  Josephine  Preston  Pea- 
body's  interpretation  of  Marlowe  is  of  the  same 
sort.  In  the  drama  of  which  Marlowe  is  the  title- 
character,  his  fellow-dramatist.  Lodge,  is  much  wor- 
ried when  he  learns  of  Marlowe's  mad  passion  for 
a  woman  of  the  court. 

Thou  art  a  glorious  madman, 
Lodge  exclaims, 

Born  to  consume  thyself  anon  in  ashes, 
And  rise  again  to  immortality. 

Marlowe  replies, 


The  Poet  as  Lover  127 

Oh,  if  she  cease  to  smile,  as  thy  looks  say. 

What  if?     I  shall  have  drained  my  splendor  down 

To  the  last  flaming  drop !    Then  take  me,  darkness, 

And  mirk  and  mire  and  black  oblivion, 

Despairs  that  raven  where  no  camp-fire  is. 

Like  the  wild  beasts.     I  shall  be  even  blest 

To  be  so  damned. 

Most  often  this  conception  of  love's  flamelike 
lightening  of  life  for  the  poet  is  applied  to  Sappho. 
Many  modern  English  poets  picture  her  living  "with 
the  swift  singing  strength  of  fire."  ^  Swinburne,  in 
On  the  Cliffs,  claims  this  as  the  essential  attribute 
of  genius,  when  he  cries  to  her  for  sympathy, 

For  all  my  days  as  all  thy  days  from  birth 

My  heart  as  thy  heart  was  in  me  as  thee 

Fire,  and  not  all  the  fountains  of  the  sea 

Have  waves  enough  to  quench  it ;  nor  on  earth 

Is  fuel  enough  to  feed. 

While  day  sows  night,  and  night  sows  day  for  seed. 

This  intensity  of  perception  is  largely  the  result, 
or  the  cause,  of  the  poet's  unusually  sensitive  con- 
sciousness of  the  ephemeralness  of  love.  The  no- 
tion of  permanence  often  seems  to  rob  love  of  all 
its  poetical  quality.  The  dark  despair  engendered  by 
a  sense  of  its  transience  is  needed  as  a  foil  to  the 

*  See  Southey,  Sappho;  Mary  Robinson  (1758-1800),  Sappho 
and  Phaon;  Philip  Moren  Freneau,  Monument  of  Phaon; 
James  Gates  Percival,  Sappho;  Charles  Kingsley,  Sappho; 
Lord  Houghton,  A  Dream  of  Sappho;  Swinburne,  On  the 
Cliffs,  Anactoria,  Sapphics;  Cale  Young  Rice,  Sappho's  Death 
Song;  Sara  Teasdale,  Sappho;  Percy  Mackaye,  Sappho  and 
Phaon;  Zoe  Akins.  Sappho  to  a  Szvallozv  on  the  Ground; 
James  B.  Kenyon,  Phaon  Concerning  Sappho,  Sappho  (1920)  ; 
William  Alexander  Percy,  Sappho  in  Levkos  (1920). 


128  The  Poet's  Poet 

fiery  splendors  of  passion.  Thus  Rupert  Brooke,  in 
the  sonnet,  Mutability,  dismisses  the  Platonic  idea 
of  eternal  love  and  beauty,  declaring. 

Dear,  we  know  only  that  we  sigh,  kiss,  smile ; 

Each  kiss  lasts  but  the  kissing;  and  grief  goes  over; 

Love  has  no  habitation  but  the  heart: 

Poor  straws !  on  the  dark  flood  we  catch  awhile, 

Cling,  and  are  borne  into  the  night  apart. 

The  laugh  dies  with  the  lips,  "Love"  with  the  lover. 

Sappho  is  represented  as  especially  aware  of  this 
aspect  of  her  love.  Her  frenzies  in  Anactoria, 
where,  if  our  hypothesis  is  correct,  Swinburne  must 
have  been  terribly  concerned  over  his  natural  cold- 
ness, arise   from   rebellion  at  the  brevity  of  love. 

Sappho  cries. 

What  had  all  we  done 
That  we  should  live  and  loathe  the  sterile  sun, 
And  with  the  moon  wax  paler  as  she  wanes, 
And  pulse  by  pulse  feel  time  grow  through  our  veins? 

Poetry,  we  are  to  believe,  arises  from  the  yearn- 
ing to  render  eternal  the  fleeting  moment  of  pas- 
sion. Sappho's  poetry  is,  as  Swinburne  says,^  "life 
everlasting  of  eternal  fire."  In  Mackaye's  Sappho 
and  Phaon,  she  exults  in  her  power  to  immortalize 
her  passion,  contrasting  herself  with  her  mother, 
the  sea : 

Her  ways  are  birth,  fecundity  and  death, 
But  mine  are  beauty  and  immortal  love. 
Therefore  I  will  be  tyrant  of  myself — 
Mine  own  law  will  I  be !    And  I  will  make 

'  In  On  the  Cliffs. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  129 

Creatures  of  mind  and  melody,  whose  forms 

Are  wrought  of  lovehness  without  decay, 

And  wild  desire  without  satiety, 

And  joy  and  aspiration  without  death. 

And  on  the  wings  of  these  shall  I,  T,  Sappho! 

Still  soar  and  sing  above  these  cliffs  of  Lesbos, 

Even  when  ten  thousand  blooms  of  men  and  maidens 

Are  fallen  and  withered. 

To  one  who  craves  an  absolute  aesthetic  stand- 
ard, it  is  satisfactory  to  note  how  nearly  unani- 
mous our  poets  are  in  their  portrayal  of  Sappho.^ 
This  is  the  more  remarkable,  since  our  enormous 
ignorance  of  her  life  and  poetry  would  give  almost 
free  scope  to  inventive  faculty.  It  is  significant  that 
none  of  our  writers  have  been  attracted  to  the  pic- 
ture Welcker  gives  of  her  as  the  respectable  ma- 
tronly head  of  a  girl's  seminary.  Instead,  she  is  in- 
variably shown  as  mad  with  an  insatiable  yearning, 
tortured  by  the  conviction  that  her  love  can  never 
be  satisfied.  Charles  Kingsley,  describing  her  tem- 
perament, 

Night  and  day 

A  mighty  hunger  yearned  within  her  heart, 

And  all  her  veins  ran  fever,^ 

conceives  of  her  much  as  does  Swinburne,  who  calls 
her, 

Love's  priestess,  mad  with  pain  and  joy  of  song, 
Song's  priestess,  mad  with  pain  and  joy  of  love.^ 

*  No  doubt  they  are  influenced  by  the  glimpse  of  her  given 
in  Longinus,  On  the  Sublime. 

*  Sappho. 

*0n  the  Cliffs. 


130  The  Poet's  Poet 

It  is  in  this  insatiability  that  Swinburne  finds  the 
secret  of  her  genius,  as  opposed  to  the  meager  de- 
sires of  ordinary  folk.  Expressing  her  conception  of 
God,  he  makes  Sappho  assert, 

■But  having  made  me,  me  he  shall  not  slay : 
Nor  slay  nor  satiate,  like  those  herds  of  his, 
Who  laugh  and  love  a  little,  and  their  kiss 
Contents  them. 

It  is,  no  doubt,  an  inarticulate  conviction  that 
she  is  "imprisoned  in  the  body  as  in  an  oyster  shell,"  ^ 
while  the  force  that  is  wooing  her  is  outside  the 
boundary  of  the  senses,  that  accounts  for  Sappho's 
agonies  of  despair.  In  Sara  Teasdale's  Sappho 
she  describes  herself. 

Who  would  run  at  dusk 
Along  the  surges  creeping  up  the  shore 
When  tides  come  in  to  ease  the  hungry  beach, 
And  running,  running  till  the  night  was  black, 
Would  fall  forspent  upon  the  chilly  sand, 
And  quiver  with  the  winds  from  off  the  sea. 
Ah !  quietly  the  shingle  waits  the  tides 
Whose  waves  are  stinging  kisses,  but  to  me 
Love  brought  no  peace,  nor  darkness  any  rest.^ 

'  Plato,  Phadrus,  §  250. 

'  In  the  end,  Sara  Teasdale  does  show  her  winning  content, 
in  the  love  of  her  baby  daughter,  but  it  is  significant  that  this 
destroys  her  lyric  gift.     She  assures  Aphrodite, 

If   I   sing  no  more 
To  thee,  God's  daughter,  powerful  as  God, 
It  is  that  thou  hast  made  my  life  too  sweet 
To  hold  the  added  sweetness  of  a  song. 

I  taught  the  world  thy  music ;  now  alone 
I  sing  for  her  who  falls  asleep  to  hear. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  131 

Swinburne  characteristically  shows  her  literally 
tearing  the  flesh  in  her  quest  of  the  divinity  that  is 
reflected  there.  In  Anactoria  she  tells  the  object 
of  her  infatuation: 

I  would  my  love  could  kill  thee :  I  am  satiated 

With  seeing  thee  alive,  and  fain  would  have  thee  dead. 

•  •  •  •  • 

I  would  find  grievous  ways  to  have  thee  slain, 
Intense  device  and  superflux  of  pain. 

And  after  detailing  with  gusto  the  bloody  ingenui- 
ties of  her  plan  of  torture,  she  states  that  her  mo- 
tive is, 

To  wring  thy  very  spirit  through  the  flesh. 

The  myth  that  Sappho's  agony  resulted  from 
an  offense  done  to  Aphrodite,  is  several  times  al- 
luded to.  In  Sappho  atid  PJmon  she  asserts  her  in- 
dependence of  Aphrodite's  good  will,  and  in  re- 
venge the  goddess  turns  Phaon's  aflfection  away 
from  Sappho,  back  to  Thalassa,  the  mother  of  his 
children.  Sappho's  infatuation  for  Phaon,  the  slave, 
seems  a  cruel  jest  of  Aphrodite,  who  fills  Sappho 
with  a  wholly  blind  and  unreasoning  passion.  In 
all  three  of  Swinburne's  Lesbian  poems,  Aphro- 
dite's anger  is  mentioned.  This  is  the  sole  theme  of 
Sapphics,  in  which  poem  the  goddess,  displeased  by 
Sappho's  preferment  of  love  poetry  to  the  actual 
delights  of  love,  yet  tried  to  win  Sappho  back  to 
her: 


132  The  Poet's  Poet 

Called  to  her,  saying  "Turn  to  me,  O  my  Sappho," 

Yet  she  turned  her  face  from  the  Loves,  she  saw  not 

Tears  or  laughter  darken  immortal  eyelids.  .  .  . 

Only  saw  the  beautiful  lips  and  fingers, 

Full  of  songs  and  kisses  and  little  whispers, 

Full  of  music ;  only  beheld  among  them 

Soar  as  a  bird  soars 

Newly  fledged,  her  visible  song,  a  marvel 

Made  of  perfect  sound  and   exceeding  passion, 

Sweetly  shapen,  terrible,  full  of  thunders, 

Clothed  with  the  wind's  wings. 

It  seems  likely  that  this  myth  of  Aphrodite's  anger 
is  an  allegory  indicating  the  tragic  character  of 
all  poetic  love,  in  that,  while  incarcerated  in  the 
body,  the  singer  strives  to  break  through  the  limits 
of  the  flesh  and  to  grasp  ideality.  The  issue  is 
made  clear  in  Mackaye's  drama.  There  Sappho's 
rival  is  Thalassa,  Phaon's  slave-mate,  who  conceives 
as  love's  only  culmination  the  bearing  of  children. 
Sappho,  in  her  superiority,  points  out  that  mere 
perpetuation  of  physical  life  is  a  meaningless  circle, 
unless  it  leads  to  some  higher  satisfaction.  But 
in  the  end  the  figure  of  "the  eternal  mother,"  as 
typified  by  Thalassa,  is  more  powerful  than  is 
Sappho,  in  the  struggle  for  Phaon's  love.  Thus 
Aphrodite  asserts  her  unwillingness  to  have  love  re- 
fined into  a  merely  spiritual  conception. 

Often  the  greatest  poets,  as  Sappho  herself,  are 
represented  as  having  no  more  than  a  blind  and 
instinctive  apprehension  of  the  supersensual  beauty 
which  is  shining  through  the  flesh,  and  which  is 
the  real  object  of  desire.     But  thus  much  ideality 


The  Poet  as  Lover  133 

must  be  characteristic  of  love,  it  seems  obvious,  be- 
fore it  can  be  spiritually  creative.  Unless  there  is 
some  sense  of  a  universal  force,  taking  the  shape 
of  the  individual  loved  one,  there  can  be  nothing 
suggestive  in  love.  Instead  of  waking  the  lover  to 
the  beauty  in  all  of  life,  as  we  have  said,  it  would, 
as  the  non-lover  has  asserted,  blind  him  to  all  but 
the  immediate  object  of  his  pursuit.  Then,  the 
goal  being  reached,  there  would  be  no  reason  for 
the  poet's  not  achieving  complete  satisfaction  in 
love,  for  there  would  be  nothing  in  it  to  suggest 
any  delight  that  he  does  not  possess.  Therefore, 
having  all  his  desire,  the  lover  would  be  lethargic, 
with  no  impulse  to  express  himself  in  song.  Prob- 
ably something  of  this  sort  is  the  meaning  of  the 
Tannhauser  legend,  as  versified  both  by  Owen  Mere- 
dith and  Emma  Lazarus,  showing  the  poet  robbed 
of  his  gift  when  he  comes  under  the  power  of  the 
Paphian  Venus.  Such  likewise  is  probably  the  mean- 
ing of  Oscar  Wilde's  sonnet,  Helas,  quoted  above. 

While  we  thus  lightly  dismiss  sensual  love  as  un- 
poetical,  we  must  remember  that  Burns,  in  some  of 
his  accounts  of  inspiration,  ascribes  quite  as  power- 
ful and  as  unidealistic  an  effect  to  the  kisses  of  the 
barmaids,  as  to  the  liquor  they  dispense.  But  this 
is  mere  bravado,  as  much  of  his  other  verse  shows. 
Byron's  case,  also,  is  a  doubtful  one.  The  element 
of  discontent  is  all  that  elevates  his  amours  above 
the  "swinish  trough,"'  which  Alfred  Austin  asserts 
them  to  be.^     Yet,  such  as  his  idealism  is,  it  con- 

^  In  Off  Mesolonghi. 


134  The  Poet's  Poet 

stitutes  the  strength  and  weakness  of  his  poetical 
gift.     Landor  well  says,^ 

Although  by  fits  so  dense  a  cloud  of  smoke 
Puffs  from  his  sappy  and  ill-seasoned  oak, 
Yet,  as  the  spirit  of  the  dream  draws  near, 
Remembered  loves  make  Byron's  self  sincere. 
The  puny  heart  within  him  swells  to  view. 
The  man  grows  loftier  and  the  poet  too. 

Ideal  love  is  most  likely  to  become  articulate  in 
the  sonnet  sequence.  The  Platonic  theory  of  love 
and  beauty,  ubiquitous  in  renaissance  sonnets,  is 
less  pretentiously  but  no  less  sincerely  present  in 
the  finest  sonnets  of  the  last  century.  The  sense 
that  the  beauty  of  his  beloved  is  that  of  all  other  fair 
forms,  the  motive  of  Shakespeare's 

Thy  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts 
Which  I  by  lacking  have  supposed  dead, 

is  likewise  the  motive  of  Rossetti's  Heart's  Compass, 

Sometimes  thou  seemest  not  as  thyself  alone, 
But  as  the  meaning  of  all  things  that  are; 
A  breathless  wonder,  shadowing  forth  afar 
Some  heavenly  solstice,  hushed  and  halcyon, 
Whose  unstirred  lips  are  music's  visible  tone; 
Whose  eyes  the  sungates  of  the  soul  unbar. 
Being  of  its  furthest  fires  oracular, 
The  evident  heart  of  all  life  sown  and  mown. 

Thus  also  Mrs.  Browning  says  of  her  earlier  ideal 
loves, 

*  In  Lines  To  a  Lady. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  135 

Their  shining  fronts, 
Their  songs,  their  splendors  (better,  yet  the  same, 
As  river  water  hallowed  into  founts) 
Met  in  thee.^ 

Reflection  of  this  sort  almost  inevitably  leads  the 
poet  to  the  conviction  that  his  real  love  is  eternal 
beauty.  Such  is  the  progress  of  Rossetti's  thought 
in  Heart's  Hope: 

Lady,  I  fain  would  tell  how  evermore 
Thy  soul  I  know  not  from  thy  body  nor 
Thee  from  myself,  neither  our  love  from  God. 

The  whole  of  Diotima's  theory  of  the  ascent  to  ideal 
beauty  is  here  implicit  in  three  lines.  In  the  same 
spirit  Christina  Rossetti  identifies  her  lover  w'ith 
her  Christian  faith : 

Yea,  as  I  apprehend  it,  love  is  such 
I  cannot  love  you  if  I  love  not  Him, 
I  cannot  love  Him  if  I  love  not  you 


2 


It  is  obvious  that,  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
beloved  at  least,  there  is  danger  in  this  identifica- 
tion of  all  beauties  as  manifestations  of  the  ideal. 
It  is  unpropitious  to  lifelong  affection  for  one  per- 
son. As  a  matter  of  fact,  though  the  English  taste 
for  decorous  fidelity  has  affected  some  poets,  on  the 
whole  they  have  not  hesitated  to  picture  their  race 
as  fickle.     Plato's  account  of  the  second  step  in  the 

^Sonnets  of  the  Portuguese,  XXVI. 

'MoHHa   Innomiuata,   VI.      See   also    Robert    Bridges,    The 
Growth  of  Love   (a  sonnet  sequence). 


136  The  Poet's  Poet 

ascent  of  the  lover,  "Soon  he  will  himself  perceive 
that  the  beauty  of  one  form  is  truly  related  to  the 
beauty  of  another;  and  then  if  beauty  in  general 
is  his  pursuit,  how  foolish  would  he  be  not  to  recog- 
nize that  the  beauty  in  every  form  is  one  and  the 
same,"  ^  is  made  by  Shelley  the  justification  of  his 
shifting  enthusiasms,  which  the  world  so  harshly 
censured.     In  Epipsychidion  Shelley  declares, 

I  never  was  attached  to  that  great  sect 

Whose  doctrine  is  that  each  one  should  select 

Out  of  the  crowd  a  mistress  or  a  friend. 

And  all  the  rest,  though  fair  and  wise,  commend 

To  cold  oblivion.  .  .  . 

True  love  in  this  differs  from  gold  and  clay. 
That  to  divide  is  not  to  take  away. 
Love  is  like  understanding,  that  grows  bright 
Gazing  on  many  truths.  .  .  . 

Narrow  the  heart  that  loves,  the  brain  that  contem- 
plates. 
The  life  that  wears,  the  spirit  that  creates 
One  object  and  one  form,  and  builds  thereby 
A  sepulchre  for  its  eternity. 

These  last  lines  suggest,  what  many  poets  have 
asserted,  that  the  goddess  of  beauty  is  apt  to  change 
her  habitation  from  one  clay  to  another,  and  that 
the  poet  who  clings  to  the  fair  form  after  she  has  de- 
parted, is  nauseated  by  the  dead  bones  which  he 
clasps."     This  theme   Rupert   Brooke  is  constantly 

^Symposium,  Jowett  translation,  §210. 

'  See  Thomas  Hardy's  novel,  The  Well  Beloved. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  137 

harping  upon,  notably  in  Dead  Mens  Love,  which 
begins, 

There  was  a  damned  successful  poet, 

There  was  a  woman  like  the  Sun. 

And  they  were  dead.    They  did  not  know  it. 

They  did  not  know  his  hymns 

Were  silence ;  and  her  limbs 

That  had  served  love  so  well, 

Dust,  and  a  filthy  smell. 

The  feeling  that  Aphrodite  is  leading  them  a  merry 
chase  through  many  forms  is  characteristic  of  our 
ultra-modern  poets,  who  anticipate  at  least  one  new 
love  affair  a  year.  Most  elegantly  Ezra  Pound  ex- 
presses his  feeling  that  it  is  time  to  move  on  to  a 
fresh  inspiration : 

As  a  bathtub  lined  with  white  porcelain 

When  the  hot  water  gives  out  or  goes  tepid, — 

So  is  the  slow  coohng  of  our  chivalrous  passion, 

My  much  praised,  but  not  altogether  satisfactory  lady. 

As  each  beautiful  form  is  to  be  conceived  of  as 
reflecting  eternal  beauty  from  a  slightly  different 
angle,  the  poet  may  claim  that  flitting  affection  is 
necessary  to  one  who  would  gain  as  complete  as 
possible  vision  of  ideality.  Not  only  so,  but  this 
glimpsing  of  beauty  through  first  one  mistress,  then 
another,  often  seems  to  perform  the  function  of  the 
mixed  metaphor  in  freeing  the  soul  from  bondage 
to  the  sensual.  This  is  the  interpretation  of  Sap- 
pho's fickleness  most  popular  with  our  writers,  who 


138  The  Poet's  Poet 

give  her  the  consciousness  that  Aphrodite,  not  flesh 
and  blood,  is  the  object  of  her  quest.  In  her  case, 
unHke  that  of  the  ordinary  lover,  the  new  passion 
does  not  involve  the  repudiation  or  belittling  of  the 
one  before.  In  Swinburne's  Anactoria  Sappho  com- 
pares her  sensations 

Last  year  when  I  loved  Atthis,  and  this  year 
When  I  love  thee. 

In  Mackaye's  Sappho  and  Phaon,  when  Alcaeus 
pleads  for  the  love  of  the  poetess,  she  asserts  of 
herself, 

I  doubt  if  ever  she  saw  form  of  man 

Or   maiden   either   whom,   being   beautiful. 

She  hath  not  loved. 

When  Alcaeus  protests,  "But  not  with  passion !"  she 
rejoins. 

All 
That  breathes  to  her  is  passion,  love  itself 
All  passionate. 

The  inevitability  of  fickleness  arising  from  her 
idealism,  which  fills  her  with  insuperable  discontent, 
is  voiced  most  clearly  by  the  nineteenth  century 
Sappho  through  the  lips  of  Sara  Teasdale,  in  lines 
wherein  she  dismisses  those  who  gossip  about  her : 

How  should  they  know  that  Sappho  lived  and  died 
Faithful  to  love,  not  faithful  to  the  lover, 
Never  transfused  and  lost  in  what  she  loved, 
Never  so  wholly  loving  nor  at  peace. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  139 

I  asked  for  something  greater  than  I  found, 
And  every  time  that  love  has  made  me  weep 
I  have  rejoiced  that  love  could  be  so  strong; 
For  I  have  stood  apart  and  watched  my  soul 
Caught  in  a  gust  of  passion  as  a  bird 
With  baffled  wings  against  the  dusty  whirlwind 
Struggles  and  frees  itself  to  find  the  sky. 

She  continues,  apostrophizing  beauty, 

In  many  guises  didst  thou  come  to  me ; 

I   saw  thee  by  the  maidens   when   they   danced, 

Phaon  allured  me  with  a  look  of  thine, 

In  Anactoria  I  knew  thy  grace. 

I  looked  at  Cercolas  and  saw  thine  eyes. 

But  never  wholly,  soul  and  body  mine 

Didst  thou  bid  any  love  me  as  I  loved. 

The  last  two  lines  suggest  another  reason  for 
the  fickleness,  as  well  as  for  the  insatiability  of  the 
poet's  love.  If  the  poet's  genius  consists  of  his  pe- 
culiar capacity  for  love,  then  in  proportion  as  he 
outsoars  the  rest  of  humanity  he  will  be  saddened, 
if  not  disillusioned,  by  the  half-hearted  return  of 
his  love.     Mrs.  Browning  characterizes  her  passion : 

I  love  thee  to  the  depth  and  breadth  and  height 
My  soul  can  reach,  when  feeling  out  of  sight 
For  the  ends  of  Being  and  ideal  grace. 

It  is  clear  that  a  lesser  soul  could  not  possibly  give 
an  adequate  response  to  such  affection.  Perhaps  it 
is  one  of  the  strongest  evidences  that  Browning  is 
a  genuine  philosopher,  and  not  a  prestidigitator  of 
philosophy    in   rhyme,   that    Mrs.    Browning's   love 


140  The  Poet's  Poet 

poetry  does  not  conclude  with  the  note  either  of 
tragic  insatiability  or  of  disillusionment.^ 

Since  the  poet's  soul  is  more  beautiful  than  the 
souls  of  other  men,  it  follows  that  he  cannot  love 
at  all  except,  in  a  sense,  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that 
he  is  easily  deceived.  Here  is  another  explanation 
of  the  transience  of  his  affections, — in  his  horrified 
recoil  from  an  unworthy  object  that  he  has  idealized. 
This  blindness  to  sensuality  is  accounted  for  by  Plato 
in  the  figijre,  "The  lover  is  his  mirror  in  whom  he 
is  beholding  himself,  but  he  is  not  aware  of  this."  ^  ^ 
This  is  the  figure  used  in  Sara  Teasdale's  little  poem, 
The  Star,  which  says  to  the  pool, 

O  wondrous  deep, 
I  love  you,  I  give  you  my  light  to  keep. 
Oh,  more  profound  than  the  moving  sea, 
That  never  has  shown  myself  to  me. 

•  •  •  • 

But  out  of  the  woods  as  night  grew  cool 
A  brown  pig  came  to  the  little  pool; 
It  grunted  and  splashed  and  waded  in 
And  the  deepest  place  but  reached  its  chin. 

The  tragedy  in  such  love  is  the  theme  of  Alfred 
Noyes'  poem  on  Marlowe,  At  the  Sign  of  the  Golden 

*  The  tragedy  of  incapacity  to  return  one's  poet-lover's 
passion  is  the  theme  of  Alice  Meynell's  The  Poet  and  his 
Wife.  On  the  same  theme  are  the  following :  Amelia  Jose- 
phine Burr,  Anne  Hathaivay's  Cottage  (1914)  ;  C.  J.  Druce, 
The  Dark  Lady  to  Shakespeare  (1919)  ;  Karle  Wilson  Baker, 
Keats  and  Fanny  Brawne  (1919)  ;  James  B.  Kenyon,  Phaon 
concerning  Sappho    (1920). 

^  Phadrus,  255. 

'  Browning  shows  the  poet,  with  his  eyes  open,  loving  an 
unworthy  form,  in  Time's  Revenges. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  141 

Shoe.  The  dramatist  comes  to  London  as  a  young 
boy,  full  of  high  visions  and  faith  in  human  nature. 
His  innocence  makes  him  easy  prey  of  a  notorious 

woman : 

In  her  treacherous  eyes, 
As  in  dark  pools  the  mirrored  stars  will  gleam, 
Here  did  he  see  his  own  eternal  skies. 

But,  since  his  love  is  wholly  spiritual,  it  dies  on 
the  instant  of  her  revelation  of  her  character: 

Clasped  in  the  bitter  grave  of  that  sweet  clay, 
Wedded  and  one  with  it,  he  moaned. 

•  •  •  • 

Yet,  ere  he  went,  he  strove  once  more  to  trace 
Deep  in  her  eyes,  the  loveliness  he  knew, 
Then — spat  his  hatred  in  her  smiling  face. 

It  is  probably  an  instance  of  the  poet's  blindness 
to  the  sensual,  that  he  is  often  represented  as  hav- 
ing a  peculiar  sympathy  with  the  fallen  woman.  He 
feels  that  all  beauty  in  this  world  is  forced  to  enter 
into  forms  unworthy  of  it,  and  he  finds  the  attrac- 
tiveness of  the  courtesan  only  an  extreme  instance 
of  this.  Joaquin  Miller's  The  Ideal  and  the  Real  is 
an  allegory  in  which  the  poet,  following  ideal  beauty 
into  this  world,  finds  her  in  such  a  form.  The  tra- 
dition of  the  poet  idealizing  the  outcast,  which  dates 
back  at  least  to  Rossetti's  Jenny,  is  still  alive,  as  wit- 
ness John  D.  Neihardt's  recent  poem,  A  Vision  of 
Woman} 

*  See  also  Kirke  White,  The  Prostitute;  Whitman,  To  a 
Common  Prostitute ;  Joaquin  Miller,  A  Dove  of  St.  Mark; 
and  Olive  Dargan,  A  Magdalen  to  Her  Poet. 


142  The  Poet's  Poet 

To  return  to  the  question  of  the  poet's  fickleness, 
a  very  ingenious  denial  of  it  is  found  in  the  argu- 
ment that,  as  his  poetical  love  is  purely  ideal,  he 
can  indulge  in  a  natural  love  that  in  no  way  inter- 
feres with  it.  A  favorite  view  of  the  1890's  is  in 
Ernest  Dowson's  Non  Sum  Qualis  Eram  Bonce  sub 
Regno  CynarcB: 

Last  night,  ah,  yesternight,  betwixt  her  lips  and  mine 
There  fell  thy  shadow,  Cynara !  thy  breath  was  shed 
Upon  my  soul  between  the  kisses  and  the  wine; 
And  I  was  desolate  and  sick  of  an  old  passion ; 
Yea,  I  was  desolate  and  bowed  my  head: 
I  have  been  faithful  to  thee,  Cynara !  in  my  fashion. 

The  poet  sometimes  regards  it  as  a  proof  of  the  su- 
persensual  nature  of  his  passion  that  he  is  willing 
to  marry  another  woman.  The  hero  of  May  Sin- 
clair's novel,  The  Divine  Fire,  who  is  irresistibly 
impelled  to  propose  to  a  girl,  even  while  he  trembles 
at  the  sacrilege  of  her  touching  a  book  belonging 
to  his  soul's  mistress,  is  only  a  reductio  ad  absurdum 
of  a  rather  popular  theory.  All  narratives  of  this 
sort  can  probably  be  traced  back  to  Dante's  autobiog- 
raphy, as  given  in  the  Vita  Nuova.  We  have  two 
poetic  dramas  dealing  with  Dante's  love,  by  G.  L. 
Raymond,^  and  by  Sara  King  Wiley.^  Both  these 
writers,  however,  show  a  tendency  to  slur  over 
Dante's  affection  for  Gemma.  Raymond  represents 
their  marriage  as  the  result  solely  of  Dante's  com- 
promising  her   by  apparent   attention,   in   order  to 

^  Dante. 

^  Dante  and  Beatrice. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  143 

avoid  the  appearance  of  insulting  Beatrice  with  too 
close  regard.  Sara  King  Wiley,  on  the  other  hand, 
stresses  the  other  aspect  of  Dante's  feeling  for 
Gemma,  his  gratitude  for  her  pity  at  the  time  of  Bea- 
trice's death.  Of  course  both  dramatists  are  bound 
by  historical  considerations  to  make  the  outcome  of 
their  plays  tragical,  but  practically  all  other  expo- 
sitions of  the  poet's  double  affections  are  likewise 
tragic.  Cale  Young  Rice  chooses  another  famous 
Renaissance  lover  for  the  hero  oi  A  Night  in  Avig- 
non, a  play  with  this  theme.  Here  Petrarch,  in  a  fit 
of  impatience  with  his  long  loyalty  to  a  hopeless 
love  for  Laura,  turns  to  a  light  woman  for  consola- 
tion. According  to  the  accepted  mode,  he  refuses 
to  tolerate  Laura's  name  on  the  lips  of  his  fancy. 
Laura,  who  has  chosen  this  inconvenient  moment  to 
become  convinced  of  the  purity  of  Petrarch's  devo- 
tion to  her,  comes  to  his  home  to  offer  her  heart, 
but,  discovering  the  other  woman's  presence  there, 
she  fails  utterly  to  comprehend  the  subtle  compli- 
ment to  her  involved,  and  leaves  Petrarch  in  an  agony 
of  contrition. 

Marlowe,  in  Josephine  Preston  Peabody's  drama, 
distributes  his  admiration  more  equally  between  his 
two  loves.  One  stimulates  the  dramatist  in  him, 
by  giving  him  an  insatiable  thirst  for  this  world; 
the  other  elevates  the  poet,  by  lifting  his  thoughts 
to  eternal  beauty.  When  he  is  charged  with  being 
in  love  with  the  Canterbury  maiden  who  is  the  ob- 
ject of  his  reverence,  the  "Little  Quietude,"  as  he 
calls  her,  he,  comparing  her  to  the  Evening  Star, 


144  I'h^  Poet's  Poet 

contrasts  her  with  the  object  of  his  burning  pas- 
sion, who  seems  to  him  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil.     He  explains, 

I  serve  a  lady  so  imperial  fair, 

June  paled  when  she  was  born.     Indeed  no  star, 

No  dream,  no  distance,  but  a  very  woman. 

Wise  with  the  argent  wisdom  of  the  snake ; 

Fair  nurtured  with  that  old  forbidden  fruit 

That  thou  hast  heard  of  .  .  . 

...  I  would  eat,  and  have  all  human  joy. 

And  know, — and   know. 

He  continues. 

But,   for  the  Evening  Star,  I  have  it  there. 
I  would  not  have  it  nearer.     Is  that  love 
As  thou  dost  understand  ?    Yet  is  it  mine 
As  I  would  have  it :  to  look  down  on  me. 
Not  loving  and  not  cruel;  to  be  bright. 
Out  of  my  reach ;  to  lighten  me  the  dark 
When  I  lift  eyes  to  it,  and  in  the  day 
To  be  forgotten.     But  of  all  things,  far. 
Far  off  beyond  me,  otherwise  no  star. 

Marlowe's  closing  words  bring  us  to  another  im- 
portant question,  i.  e.,  the  stage  of  love  at  which  it  is 
most  inspiring.  This  is  the  subject  of  much  dif- 
ference of  opinion.  Mrs.  Browning  might  well  in- 
quire, in  one  of  her  love  sonnets. 

How,  Dearest,  wilt  thou  have  me  for  most  use? 

A  hope,  to  sing  by  gladly?  or  a  fine 

Sad  memory  with  thy  songs  to  interfuse? 


The  Poet  as  Lover  145 

A  shade,  in  which  to  sing,  of  palm  or  pine? 

A  grave,  on  which  to  rest   from  singing?     Choose.^ 

Each  of  these  situations  has  been  celebrated  as  be- 
getting the  poet's  inspiration. 

To  follow  the  process  of  elimination,  we  may  first 
dispose  of  the  married  state  as  least  likely  to  be  spir- 
itually creative.  It  is  true  that  we  find  a  number 
of  poems  addressed  by  poets  to  their  wives.  But 
these  are  more  likely  to  be  the  contented  purring 
of  one  who  writes  by  a  cozy  fireside,  than  the  pas- 
sionate cadence  of  one  whose  genius  has  been  fanned 
to  flame.  One  finds  but  a  single  champion  of  the 
married  state  considered  abstractly.  This  is  Alfred 
Austin,  in  whose  poem,  The  Poet  and  the  Muse,  his 
genius  explains  to  tlie  newly  betrothed  poet : 

How  should  you,  poet,  hope  to  sing? 
The  lute  of  love  hath  a  single  string. 
Its  note  is  sweet  as  the  coo  of  the  dove, 
But  'tis  only  one  note,  and  the  note  is  love. 

But  when  once  you  have  paired  and  built  your  nest. 
And  can  brood  thereon  with  a  settled  breast. 
You   will   sing  once  more,   and  your  voice   will   stir 
All  hearts  with  the  sweetness  gained  from  her. 

And  perhaps  even  Alfred  Austin's  vote  is  canceled 
by  his  inconsistent  statement  in  his  poem  on  Petrarch, 
At  Vaucluse, 

Let  this  to  lowlier  bards  atone. 
Whose  unknown  Laura  is  their  own, 
Possessing  and  possessed : 

^Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  XVII. 


146  The  Poet's  Poet 

Of  whom  if  sooth  they  do  not  sing, 
'Tis  that  near  her  they  fold  their  wing 
To  drop  into  her  nest. 

Let  us  not  forget  Shelley's  expression  of  his  need 
for  his  wife: 

Ah,  Mary  dear,  come  to  me  soon; 
I  am  not  well  when  thou  art  far; 
As  twilight  to  the  sphered  moon, 
As  sunset  to  the  evening  star, 
Thou,  beloved,  art  to  me.^ 

Perhaps  it  is  unworthy  quibbling  to  object  that  the 
figure  here  suggests  too  strongly  Shelley's  conscious- 
ness of  the  merely  atmospheric  function  of  Mary,  in 
enhancing  his  own  personality,  as  contrasted  with 
the  radiant  divinity  of  Emilia  Viviani,  to  whom  he 
ascribes  his  creativeness.^ 

It  is  customary  for  our  bards  gallantly  to  explain 
that  the  completeness  of  their  domestic  happiness 
leaves  them  no  lurking  discontent  to  spur  them  on 
to  verse  writing.  This  is  the  conclusion  of  the  hap- 
pily wedded  heroes  of  Bayard  Taylor's  A  Poet's 
Journal,  and  of  Coventry  Patmore's  The  Angel  in 
the  House;  likewise  of  the  poet  in  J.  G.  Holland's 
Kathrina,  who  excuses  his  waning  inspiration  after 
his  marriage : 

She,  being  all  my  world,  had  left  no  room 

For  other  occupation  than  my  love. 

...  I  had  grown  enervate 

In  the  warm  atmosphere  which  I  had  breathed. 

*  To  Mary. 

'  Compare  Wordsworth,  She  Was  a  Phantom  of  Delight,  O 
Dearer  Far  than  Life;  Tennyson,  Dedication  of  Enoch  Arden. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  147 

Taken  as  a  whole,  the  evidence  is  decidedly  in 
favor  of  the  remote  love,  prevented  in  some  way 
from  reaching  its  culmination.  To  requote  Alfred 
Noyes,  the  poet  knows  that  ideal  love  must  be 

Far  off,  beyond  me,  otherwise  no  star.^ 

In  Sister  Songs  Francis  Thompson  asserts  that  such 
remoteness  is  essential  to  his  genius: 

I  deem  well  why  life  unshared 
Was  ordained  me  of  yore. 
In  pairing  time,  we  know,  the  bird 
Kindles  to  its  deepmost  splendour, 

And  the  tender 
Voice  is  tenderest  in  its  throat. 
Were  its  love,  forever  by  it, 

Never  nigh  it, 
It  might  keep  a  vernal  note. 
The  crocean  and  amethystine 

In  their  pristine 
Lustre  linger  on  its  coat.^ 

Byron,  in  the  Lament  of  Tasso,  causes  that  famous 
lover  likewise  to  maintain  that  distance  is  necessary 
to  idealization.     He  sighs, 

Successful  love  may  sate  itself  away. 

The  wretched  are  the  faithful ;  'tis  their  fate 

To  have  all  feeling  save  the  one  decay, 

*  Marlowe. 

'  Possibly  this  is  characteristic  only  of  the  male  singer. 
Christina  Rossetti  expresses  the  opposite  attitude  in  Mouna 
Innotninata  XIV,  mourning  for 

The  silence  of  a  heart  that  sang  its  songs 
When  youth  and  beauty  made  a  summer  morn, 
Silence  of  love  that  cannot  sing  again. 


148  The  Poet's  Poet 

And  every  passion  into  one  dilate, 

As  rapid  rivers  into  ocean  pour. 

But  ours  is  bottomless  and  hath  no  shore. 

The  manner  of  achieving  this  necessary  remote- 
ness is  a  nice  problem.  Of  course  the  poet  may 
choose  it,  with  open  eyes,  as  the  Marlowe  of  Miss 
Peabody's  imagination  does,  or  as  the  minstrel  in 
Hewlitt's  Cormac,  Son  of  Ogmond.  The  long  en- 
gagements of  Rossetti  and  Tennyson  are  often 
quoted  as  exemplifying  this  idiosyncrasy  of  poets. 
But  there  is  something  decidedly  awkward  in  such 
a  situation,  inasmuch  as  it  is  not  till  love  becomes 
so  intense  as  to  eclipse  the  poet's  pride  and  joy  in 
poetry  that  it  becomes  efifective  as  a  muse.^  The 
minor  poet,  to  be  sure,  is  often  discovered  solicitously 
feeling  his  pulse  to  gauge  the  effect  of  love  on  his 
rhymes,  but  one  does  not  feel  that  his  verse  gains  by 
it.  Therefore,  an  external  obstacle  is  usually  made 
to  intervene. 

As  often  as  not,  this  obstacle  is  the  indifference 

of  the  beloved.     One  finds   rejected  poets  by  the 

dozens,  mourning  in  the  verse  of  our  period.     The 

sweetheart's  reasons  are  manifold;  her  suitor's  m- 

ferior   station    and   poverty   being    favorites.      But 

one  wonders  if  the  primary  reason  may  not  be  the 

quality  of  the  love  offered  by  the  poet,  whose  extreme 

humility  and  idealization  are  likely  to  engender  pride 

and  contempt  in  the  lady,  she  being  unaware  that 

*  See  Mrs.  Browning,  Sonnet  VII. 

And  this !  this  lute  and  song,  loved  yesterday, 

Are  only  dear,  the   singing  angels  know 

Because  thy  name  moves  right  in  what  they  say. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  149 

it  is  the  reflection  of  his  own  soul  that  the  poet  is 
worshipping  in  her.  One  can  feel  some  sympathy 
with  the  lady  in  Thomas  Hardy's  /  Rose  Up  as  My 
Custom  Is,  who,  when  her  lover's  ghost  discovers 
her  beside  a  snoring  spouse,  confesses  that  she  is 
content  with  her  lot : 

He  makes  no  quest  into  my  thoughts, 
But  a  poet  wants  to  know 
What  one  has  felt  from  earliest  days. 
Why  one  thought  not  in  other  ways. 
And  one's  loves  of  long  ago. 

It  may  be,  too,  that  an  instinct  for  protection  has 
something  to  do  v^ath  the  lady's  rejection,  for  a  re- 
cent poet  has  openly  proclaimed  the  effect  of  at- 
taining, in  successful  love,  one  step  toward  abso- 
lute beauty: 

O  beauty,  as  thy  heart  o'erflows 
In  tender  yielding  unto  me, 

A  vast  desire  awakes  and  grows 
Unto  forget  fulness  of  thee.^ 

Rejection  is  apt  to  prove  an  obstacle  of  double 
worth  to  the  poet,  since  it  not  only  removes  him  to 
a  distance  where  his  lady's  human  frailties  are  less 
visible,  so  that  the  divine  light  shining  through  her 
seems  less  impeded,  but  it  also  fires  him  with  a  very 
human  ambition  to  prove  his  transcendent  worth 
and  thus  "get  even"  with  his  unappreciative  beloved. - 

^  "A.   E.,"    The  Fountain   of  Sliadozi.'y  Beauty. 
*See  Joaquin  Miller,  Ina;  G.  L.  Raymond,  "Lozing,"  from 
A  Life  in  Song;  Alexander  Smith,  A  Life  Drama. 


150  The  Poet's  Poet 

Richard  Realf  in  Adznce  Gratis  satirically  depicts  the 
lady's  altruism  in  rejecting  her  lover : 

It  would  strike  fresh  heat  in  your  poet's  verse 
If  you  dropped  some  aloes  into  his  wine, 
They  write  supremely  under  a  curse. 

There  is  danger,  of  course,  that  the  disillusion- 
ment produced  by  the  revelation  of  low  ideals  which 
the  lady  makes  in  her  refusal  will  counterbalance 
these  good  effects.  Still,  though  the  poet  is  so 
egotistical  toward  all  the  world  beside,  in  his  at- 
titude toward  his  lady  the  humility  which  Emerson 
expresses  in  The  Sphinx  is  not  without  parallel  in 
verse.  Many  singers  follow  him  in  his  belief  that 
the  only  worthy  love  is  that  for  a  being  so  superior 
that  a  return  of  love  is  imix)ssible.^ 

To  poets  w^ho  do  not  subscribe  to  Emerson's  be- 
lief in  one-sided  attachments,  Alexander  Smith's  A 
Life  Drama  is  a  treasury  of  suggestions  as  to  de- 
vices by  which  the  poet's  lady  may  be  kept  at  suf- 
ficient distance  to  be  useful.  With  the  aid  of  inter- 
calations Smith  exhibits  the  poet  removed  from  his 
lady  by  scornful  rejection,  by  parental  restraint,  by 
an  unhappy  marriage,  by  self-reproach,  and  by  death. 
All  these  devices  have  been  popular  in  our  poetry. 

*  See  The  Sphinx — 

Have  I  a  lover  who  is  noble  and   free? 

I  would  he  were  nobler  than  to  love  me. 
See  also  Walt  Whitman,  Sometimes  zt/ith  One  I  Love,  and 
Mrs.  Browning,  "I  never  thought  that  anyone  whom  I  could 
love  would  stoop  to  love  me — the  two  things  seemed  clearly 
incompatible."  Letter  to  Robert  Browning,  December  24, 
1845. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  151 

The  lady's  marriage  is  seldom  felt  to  be  an  insuper- 
able barrier  to  love,  though  it  is  effective  in  removing 
her  to  a  suitable  distance  for  idealization.  The  poet's 
worship  is  so  supersensual  as  to  be  inofifensive.  To 
confine  ourselves  to  poetic  dramas  treating  historical 
poets, — Beatrice,'  Laura,-  Vittoria  Colonna,'*  and 
Alison  ■*  are  all  married  to  one  man  while  inspiring 
another.  A  characteristic  autobiographical  love 
poem  of  this  type,  is  that  of  Francis  Thompson, 
who  asserts  the  ideality  of  the  poet's  affection  in  his 
reference  to 

This  soul  which  on  thy  soul  is  laid. 
As  maid's  breast  upon  breast  of  maid.^ 

There  is  no  other  barrier  that  so  elevates  love 
as  does  death.  Translation  of  love  into  Platonic 
idealism  is  then  almost  inevitable.  Alexander  Smith 
describes  the  change  accomplished  by  the  death  of  the 
poet's  sweetheart : 

Two  passions  dwelt  at  once  within  his  soul. 

Like  eve  and  sunset  dwelling  in  one  sky. 

And  as  the  sunset  dies  along  the  west, 

Eve  higher  lifts  her  front  of  trembling  stars 

Till  she  is  seated  in  the  middle  sky. 

So  gradual  one  passion  slowly  died 

And  from  its  death  the  other  drew  fresh  life, 

Lentil  'twas  seated  in  the  soul  alone. 

The  dead  was  love,  the  living,  poetry. 

*G.   L.   Raymond's  and   S.   K.  Wiley's  dramas,  Dante,  and 
Dante  and  Beatrice. 

'  Cale  Young  Rice,  A  Night  in  Avignon. 

'Longfellow,  Michael  Angela. 

*  Peabody,  Marlowe. 

'See  also  Ad  Aniicam,  Her  Portrait,  Manus  Animon  Pinxil. 


152  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  mystic  merging  of  Beatrice  into  ideal  beauty 
is,  of  course,  mentioned  often  in  nineteenth  century 
poetry,  most  sympathetically,  perhaps,  by  Rossetti.^ 
Much  the  same  kind  of  translation  is  described 
in  Vane's  Story,  by  James  Thomson,  B.V.,  which 
appears  to  be  a  sort  of  mystic  autobiography. 

The  ascent  in  love  for  beauty,  as  Plato  describes 
it,-  might  be  expected  to  mark  at  every  step  an  in- 
crease of  poetic  power,  as  it  leads  one  from  the  in- 
dividual beauties  of  sense  to  absolute,  supersensual 
beauty.  But  it  is  extremely  doubtful  if  this  increase 
in  poetic  power  is  achieved  when  our  poets  try  to 
take  the  last  step,  and  rely  for  their  inspiration  upon 
a  lover's  passion  for  disembodied,  purely  ideal 
beauty.  The  lyric  power  of  such  love  has,  indeed, 
been  celebrated  by  a  recent  poet.  George  Edward 
Woodberry,  in  his  sonnet  sequence,  Ideal  Passion, 
thus  exalts  his  mistress,  the  abstract  idea  of  beauty, 
above  the  loves  of  other  poets : 

Dante  and  Petrarch  all  unenvied  go 
From  star  to  star,  upward,  all  heavens  above, 
The  grave  forgot,  forgot  the  human  woe. 
Though  glorified,  their  love  was  human  love. 
One  unto  one ;  a  greater  love  I  know. 

But  very  few  of  our  poets  have   felt  their  genius 

burning  at  its  brightest  when  they  have  eschewed  the 

sensuous  embodiment  of  their  love. 

Plato  might  point  out  that  he  intended  his  theory 

of  progression  in  love  as  a  description  of  the  de- 

^  See  On  the  Vita  Nuova  of  Dante;  also  Dante  at  Verona. 
'  Symposium. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  153 

velopment  of  the  philosopher,  not  of  the  poet,  who, 
as  a  base  imitator  of  sense,  has  not  a  pure  enough 
soul  to  soar  very  high  away  from  it.  But  our  writ- 
ers have  been  able  partially  to  vindicate  poets  by 
pointing  out  that  Dante  was  able  to  travel  the  whole 
way  toward  absolute  beauty,  and  to  sublimate  his 
perceptions  to  supersensual  fineness  without  losing 
their  poetic  tone.  Nineteenth  and  twentieth  cen- 
tury writers  may  modestly  assert  that  it  is  the  fault 
of  their  inadequacy  to  represent  poetry,  and  not  a 
fault  in  the  poetic  character  as  such,  that  accounts 
for  the  tameness  of  their  most  idealistic  verse. 

However  this  may  be,  one  notes  a  tendency  in 
much  purely  idealistic  and  philosophical  love  poetry 
to  present  us  with  a  mere  skeleton  of  abstraction. 
Part  of  this  effect  may  be  the  reader's  fault,  of 
course.  Plato  assures  us  that  the  harmonies  of 
mathematics  are  more  ravishing  than  the  har- 
monies of  music  to  the  pure  spirit,  but  many  of  us 
must  take  his  word  for  it ;  in  the  same  way  it  may 
be  that  when  we  fail  to  appreciate  certain  celebrations 
of  ideal  love  it  is  because  of  our  "muddy  vesture  of 
decay"  which  hinders  our  hearing  its  harmonies. 

Within  the  last  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  three 
notable  attempts,  of  widely  varying  success,  have 
been  made  to  write  a  purely  philosophical  love 
poem.^ 

Bulwer  Lytton's  Milton  was,  if  one  may  believe 

^  Keats'  Endymion  is  not  discussed  here,  though  it  seems 
to  have  much  in  common  with  the  philosophy  of  the  Sym- 
posium.    See  Sidney  Colvin,  John  Keats,  pp.  i6off. 


154  The  Poet's  Poet 

the  press  notices,  the  most  favorably  received  of  his 
poems,  but  it  is  a  signal  example  of  aspiring  verse 
that  misses  both  the  sensuous  beauty  of  poetry,  and 
the  intellectual  content  of  philosophy.  Milton  is 
portrayed  as  the  life-long  lover  of  an  incarnation  of 
beauty  too  attenuated  to  be  human  and  too  physical 
to  be  purely  ideal.  At  first  Milton  devotes  himself 
to  this  vision  exclusively,  but,  hearing  the  call  of  his 
country  in  distress,  he  abandons  her,  and  their  love 
is  not  suffered  to  culminate  till  after  death.  Bulwer 
Lytton  cites  the  Phcudriis  of  Plato  as  the  basis  of  his 
allegory,  reminding  us, 

The  Athenian  guessed  that  when  our  souls  descend 
From  some  lost  realm  (sad  aliens  here  to  be), 
Dim  broken  memories  of  the  state  before 
Form  what  we  call  our  reason  .  .  . 
...  Is  not  Love, 

Of  all  those  memories  which  to  parent  skies 
Mount  struggling  back — (as  to  their  source,  above. 
In  upward  showers,  imprisoned  founts  arise:) 
Oh,  is  not  Love  the  strongest  and  the  clearest  ? 

Greater  importance  attaches  to  a  recent  treatment 
of  the  theme  by  George  Edward  Woodberry.  His 
poem,  Agathon,  dealing  with  the  young  poet  of 
Plato's  Symposium,  is  our  most  literal  interpreta- 
tion of  Platonism.  Agathon  is  sought  out  by  the 
god  of  love,  Eros,  who  is  able  to  realize  his  di- 
vinity only  through  the  perfection  of  man's  love  of 
beauty.  He  chooses  Agathon  as  the  object  of  in- 
struction because  Agathon  is  a  poet,  one  of  those 


The  Poet  as  Lover  155 

Whose  eyes  were  more  divinely  touched 

In  that  long-memoried  world  whence  souls  set  forth. 

As  the  poem  opens,  Agathon  is  in  the  state  of  the 
favorite  poet  of  nineteenth  century  imagination, 
loving,  yet  discontented  with,  the  beauty  of  the 
senses.  To  Diotima,  the  wise  woman  of  the  Sym- 
posium,  he  expresses  his  unhappiness : 

Still  must  I  mourn 
That  every  lovely  thing  escapes  the  heart 
Even  in  the  moment  of  its  cherishing. 

Eros  appears  and  promises  Agathon  that  if  he  will 
accept  his  love,  he  may  find  happiness  in  eternal 
beauty,  and  his  poetical  gift  will  be  ennobled: 

Eros  I  am,  the  wooer  of  men's  hearts. 
Unclasp  thy  lips ;  yield  me  thy  close  embrace ; 
So  shall  thy  thoughts  once  more  to  heaven  climb. 
Their  music  linger  here,  the  joy  of  men. 

Agathon  resolves  to  cleave  to  him,  but  at  this  point 
Anteros,  corresponding  to  Plato's  Venus  Pandemos, 
enters  into  rivalry  with  Eros  for  Agathon's  love. 
He  shows  the  poet  a  beautiful  phantom,  who  de- 
scribes the  folly  of  one  who  devotes  himself  to 
spiritual  love : 

The  waste  desire  be  his,  and   sightless   fate. 

Him  light  shall  not  revisit ;  late  he  knows 

The  love  that  mates  the  heaven  weds  the  grave. 

Agathon  starts  to  embrace  her,  but  seeing  in  her 
face  the  inevitable  decay  of  sensual  beauty,  he  re- 
coils, crying, 


156  The  Poet's  Poet 

In  its  fiery  womb  I  saw 
The  twisted  serpent  ringing  woe  obscene, 
And  far  it  lit  the  pitchy  ways  of  hell. 

In  an  agony  of  horror  and  contrition,  he  recalls 
Eros,  who  expounds  to  him  how  love,  beginning 
with  sensuous  beauty,  leads  one  to  ideality: 

Let  not  dejection  on  thy  heart  take  hold 
That  nature  hath  in  thee  her  sure  effects, 
And  beauty  wakes  desire.    Should  Daphne's  eyes, 
Leucothea's  arms,  and  clinging  white  caress, 
The  arch  of  Thetis'  brows,  be  made  in  vain? 

But,  he  continues, 

In  fair  things 
There  is  another  vigor,  flowing  forth 
From   heavenly    fountains,   the   glad   energy 
That  broke  on  chaos,  and  the  outward  rush 
Of  the  eternal  mind ;  .  .  . 
.  .  .  Hence  the  poet's  eye 
That  mortal  sees,  creates  immortally 
The  hero  more  than  men,  not  more  than  man, 
The  type  prophetic. 

Agathon,  in  an  ecstasy  of  comprehension,  chants 
the  praises  of  love  which  Plato  puts  into  his  mouth 
in  the  Symposium.  In  conclusion,  Urania  sums 
up  the  mystery  of  love  and  genius : 

For  truth  divine  is  life,  not  love. 

Creative   truth,   and  evermore 

Fashions  the  object  of  desire 

Through  love  that  breathes  the  spirit's  fire. 


The  Poet  as  Lover  157 

We  may  fittingly  conclude  a  discussion  of  the 
poet  as  lover  with  the  Epipsychidion,  not  merely  be- 
cause it  is  the  most  idealistic  of  the  interpretations 
of  Platonic  love  given  by  nineteenth  century  poets, 
but  because  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  it  describes 
Shelley's  personal  experience,  it  should  be  most 
valuable  in  revealing  the  attitude  toward  love  of 
one  possessing  the  purest  of  poetic  gifts. ^ 

The  prominence  given  to  Shelley's  earthly  loves 
in  this  poem  has  led  J.  A.  Symonds  to  deny  that  it 
is  truly  Platonic.     He  remarks, 

While  Shelley's  doctrine  in  Epipsychidion  seems 
Platonic,  it  will  not  square  with  the  Symposium.  .  .  . 
When  a  man  has  formed  a  just  conception  of  uni- 
versal beauty,  he  looks  back  with  a  smile  on  those  who 
find  their  soul's  sphere  in  the  love  of  some  mere  mortal 
object.  Tested  by  this  standard,  Shelley's  identifica- 
tion of  Intellectual  Beauty  with  so  many  daughters  of 
earth,  and  his  worshipping  love  of  Emilia,  is  spurious 
Platonism.^ 

Perhaps  this  failure  to  break  altogether  with  the 
physical  is  precisely  the  distinction  between  the 
love  of  the  poet  and  the  love  of  the  philosopher 
with  whom  Plato  is  concerned.  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  Platonism  of  this  poem  is  intrinsically 
spurious;  the  conception  of  Emilia  seems  to  be  in- 
tended simply  as  a  poetic  personification  of  abstract 
beauty,  but  it  is  undeniable  that  at  times  this  vision 
does  not  mean  abstract  beauty  to  Shelley  at  all,  but 
the  actual  Emilia  Viviani.    He  has  protested  against 

*  Treatment  of  this  theme  is  foreshadowed  in  Alastor. 
'Shelley,  p.  142. 


158  The  Poet's  Poet 

this  judgment,  "The  Epipsychidion  is  a  mystery;  as 
to  real  flesh  and  blood,  you  know  that  I  do  not  deal 
with  those  articles."  The  revulsion  of  feeling  that 
turned  him  away  from  Emilia,  however,  taught  him 
how  much  of  his  feeling  for  her  had  entered  into 
the  poem,  so  that,  in  June,  1822,  Shelley  wrote, 

The  Epipsychidion  I  cannot  bear  to  look  at.  I  think 
one  is  always  in  love  with  something  or  other;  the 
error,  and  I  confess  it  is  not  easy  for  spirits  cased  in 
flesh  and  blood  to  avoid  it,  consists  in  seeking  in  a 
mortal  image  the  likeness  of  what  is  perhaps  eternal. 

Shelley  begins  his  spiritual  autobiography  with 
his  early  mystical  intuition  of  the  existence  of  spir- 
itual beauty,  which  is  to  be  the  real  object  of  his 
love  throughout  life.  By  Plato,  of  course,  this 
love  is  made  prenatal.     Shelley  says, 

She  met  me,  robed  in  such  exceeding  glory 
That  I  beheld  her  not. 

As  this  vision  was  totally  disjoined  from  earthly 
objects,  it  won  the  soul  away  from  all  interest  in 
life.     Therefore  Shelley  says. 

She  met  me.  Stranger,  upon  life's  rough  way 
And  lured  me  towards  sweet  death. 

This  early  vision  passed  away,  however, 

Into   the    dreary    cone    of    our    life's    shade. 

This  line  is  evidently  Shelley's  Platonic  fashion  of 
referring  to  the  obscurity  of  this  life  as  compared 


The  Poet  as  Lov^er  159 

to  the  world  of  ideas.  As  the  vision  has  embodied 
itself  in  this  world,  it  is  only  through  love  of  its 
concrete  manifestations  that  the  soul  may  regain  it. 
When  it  is  regained,  it  will  not  be,  as  in  the  begin- 
ning, a  momentary  intuition,  but  an  abiding  pres- 
ence in  the  soul. 

The  first  step  toward  this  goal  was  a  mistaken  one. 
Shelley  describes  his  marriage  with  Harriet  as  a 
yielding  to  the  senses  merely,  in  other  words,  as 
slavery  to  the  Venus  Pandemos.  He  describes  this 
false  vision. 

Whose  voice  was  venomed  melody. 

•  •  •  • 

The  breath  of  her  false  mouth  was  like  sweet  flowers, 
Her  touch  was  as  electric  poison. 

Shelley  was  more  successful  in  his  second  love,  for 
Mary,  whom  he  calls  the  "cold,  chaste  moon."  The 
danger  of  this  stage  in  the  ascent  toward  beauty 
is  that  one  is  likely  to  be  content  with  the  fragmen- 
tary glimpse  of  beauty  gained  through  the  loved 
one,  and  by  losing  sight  of  its  other  embodiments  fail 
to  aspire  to  more  complete  vision.  So  Shelley  says 
of  this  period,  "I  was  laid  asleep,  spirit  and  limb." 
By  a  great  effort,  however,  the  next  step  was  taken, 
— the  agonizing  one  of  breaking  away  from  the 
bondage  of  this  individual,  in  order  that  beauty  in 
all  its  forms  may  appeal  to  one.     Shelley  writes, 

What  storms  then  shook  the  ocean  of  my  sleep, 
Blotting  that  moon,  whose  pale  and  waning  lips 
Then  shrank  as  in  the  sickness  of  eclipse. 


t6o  The  Poet's  Poet 

Finally,  the  dross  of  its  earthly  embodiments  being 
burned  away  by  this  renunciation,  ideal  beauty  is 
revealed  to  the  poet,  not  merely  in  a  flash  of  inspira- 
tion, as  at  the  beginning  of  his  quest,  but  as  an 
abiding  presence  in  the  soul.  At  least  this  is  the 
ideal,  but,  being  a  poet,  Shelley  cannot  claim  the 
complete  merging  with  the  ideal  that  the  philosopher 
possesses.  At  the  supersensual  consummation  of 
his  love,  Shelley  sinks  back,  only  half  conceiving 
of  it,  and  cries, 

Woe  is  me! 
The  winged  words  on  which  my  soul  would  pierce 
Into  the  height  of  Love's  rare  universe 
Are  chains  of  lead  around  its  flight  of  fire; 
I  pant,  I  sink,  I  tremble,  I  expire. 


IV 

THE  SPARK  FROM  HEAVEN 

T^ARE  we  venture  into  the  holy  of  holies,  where 
-*-^  the  gods  are  said  to  come  upon  the  poet?  Is 
there  not  danger  that  the  divine  spark  which  kindles 
his  song  may  prove  a  bolt  to  annihilate  us,  be- 
cause of  our  presumptuous  intrusion?  What  voice 
is  this,  which  meets  us  at  the  threshold? 

Beware !    Beware ! 
His  flashing  eyes,  his  floating  hair ! 
Weave  a  circle  round  him  thrice. 
And  close  your  eyes  in  holy  dread — 

It  is  Coleridge,  warning  us  of  our  peril,  if  we  re- 
main open-eyed  and  curious,  trying  to  surprise  the 
secret  of  the  poet's  visitation. 

Yet  are  we  not  tolerably  safe?  We  are  under  the 
guidance  of  an  initiate;  the  poet  himself  promises 
to  unveil  the  mystery  of  his  inspiration  for  us.  As 
Vergil  kept  Dante  unscathed  by  the  flames  of  the 
divine  vision,  will  not  our  poet  protect  us?  Let 
us  enter. 

But  another  doubt,  a  less  thrilling  one,  bids  us 
pause.  Is  it  indeed  the  heavenly  mystery  that  we 
are  bid  gaze  upon,  or  are  we  to  be  the  dupe  of  self- 
deceived  impostors?    Our  intimacy  is  with  poets  of 

I6l 


i62  The  Poet's  Poet 

the  last  two  centuries, — not  the  most  inspired  period 
in  the  history  of  poetry.  And  in  the  ranks  of  our 
multitudinous  verse-writers,  it  is  not  the  most  pre- 
possessing who  are  loudest  in  promising  us  a  fair 
si^ectacle.  How  harsh-voiced  and  stammering  are 
some  of  these  obscure  apostles  who  are  offering  to 
exhibit  the  entire  mystery  of  their  gift  of  tongues! 
We  see  more  impressive  figures,  to  be  sure.  Here 
is  the  saturnine  Poe,  who  with  contemptuous  smile 
assures  us  that  we  are  welcome  to  all  the  secrets 
of  his  creative  frenzies.  Here  is  our  exuberant 
Walt  Whitman,  crying,  "Stop  this  day  and  night 
with  me,  and  you  shall  possess  the  origin  of  all 
poems."  ^  But  though  we  scan  every  face  twice,  we 
find  here  no  Shakespeare  promising  us  the  key  to 
creation  of  a  Hamlet. 

Still,  is  it  not  well  to  follow  a  forlorn  hope? 
Among  the  less  vociferous,  here  are  singers  whose 
faces  are  alight  with  a  mysterious  radiance.  Though 
they  promise  us  little,  saying  that  they  themselves 
are  blinded  by  the  transcendent  vision,  so  that  they 
appear  as  men  groping  in  darkness,  yet  may  they  not 
unawares  afford  us  some  glimpse  of  their  trans- 
figuration ? 

If  we  refuse  the  poet's  revelation,  we  have  no 
better  way  of  arriving  at  the  truth.  The  scientist 
offers  us  little  in  this  field ;  and  his  account  of 
inspiration  is  as  cold  and  comfortless  as  a  chemical 
formula.  Of  course  the  scientist  is  amused  by  this 
objection  to  him,  and  asks,  "What  more  do  you 
*  Song  of  Myself. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  163 

expect  from  the  effusions  of  poets?  Will  not  what- 
ever secret  they  reveal  prove  an  open  one?  What 
will  it  profit  you  to  learn  that  the  milk  of  Paradise 
nourishes  the  poetic  gift,  since  it  is  not  handled  by 
an  earthly  dairy?'  But  when  he  speaks  thus,  our 
scientific  friend  is  merely  betraying  his  ignorance 
regarding  the  nature  of  poetry.  Longinus,^  and 
after  him,  Sidney,-  long  ago  pointed  out  its  peculiar 
action,  telling  us  that  it  is  the  poet's  privilege  to 
make  us  partakers  of  his  ecstasy.  So,  if  the  poet 
describes  his  creative  impulses,  why  should  he  not 
make  us  sharers  of  them? 

This  is  not  an  idle  question,  for  surely  Plato,  that 
involuntary  poet,  has  had  just  this  effect  upon  his 
readers.  Plave  not  his  pictures,  in  the  Phcodrus  and 
the  Ion,  of  the  artist's  ecstasy  touched  Shelley  and 
the  lesser  Platonic  poets  of  our  time  with  the 
enthusiasm  he  depicts?  Incidentally,  the  figure  of 
the  magnet  which  Plato  uses  in  the  Ion  may  arouse 
hope  in  the  breasts  of  us,  the  humblest  readers  of 
Shelley  and  Woodberry.  For  as  one  link  gives 
power  of  suspension  to  another,  so  that  a  ring  which 
is  not  touched  by  the  magnet  is  yet  thrilled  with  its 
force,  so  one  who  is  out  of  touch  with  Plato's 
supernal  melodies,  may  be  sensitized  by  the  virtue 
imparted  to  his  nineteenth  century  disciples,  who 
are  able  to  "temper  this  planetary  music  for  mortal 
ears." 

Let  us  not  lose  heart,  at  the  beginning  of  our 

*  On  the  Sublime,  I. 
^Apology  for  Poetry. 


164  The  Poet's  Poet 

investigation,  though  our  greatest  poets  admit  that 
they  themselves  have  not  been  able  to  keep  this 
creative  ecstasy  for  long.  To  be  sure  this  is  dis- 
illusioning. We  should  prefer  to  think  of  their 
silent  intervals  as  times  of  insight  too  deep  for 
expression;  as  Anna  Branch  phrases  it, 

When  they  went 
Unto  the  fullness  of  their  great  content 
Like  moths  into  the  grass  with  folded  wings.^ 

This  pleasing  idea  has  been  fostered  in  us  by  poems 
of  appeal  to  silent  singers."  But  we  have  manifold 
confessions  that  it  is  not  commonly  thus  with  the 
non-productive  poet.  Not  merely  do  we  possess 
many  requiems  sung  by  erst-while  makers  over  their 
departed  gift,^  but  there  is  much  verse  indicating 
that,  even  in  the  poet's  prime,  his  genius  is  subject 
to  a  mysterious  ebb  and   flow.*     Though  he  has 

^  The  Silence  of  the  Poets. 

*  See  Swinburne,  A  Ballad  of  Appeal  to  Christina  Rossetti; 
and  Francis  Thompson,  To  a  Poet  Breaking  Silence. 

'See  especially  Scott,  Farewell  to  the  Muse;  Kirke  White, 
Hushed  is  the  Lyre;  Landor,  Dull  is  My  Verse,  and  To  Words- 
worth; James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  The  Fire  that  Filled  My  Heart 
of  Old,  and  The  Poet  and  the  Muse;  Joaquin  Miller,  Vale; 
Andrew  Lang,  The  Poet's  Apology;  Francis  Thompson,  The 
Cloud's  Swan  Song. 

*  See  Burns,  Second  Epistle  to  Lapraik ;  Keats,  To  My 
Brother  George;  Winthrop  Mackworth  Praed,  Letter  from 
Eaton;  William  Cullen  Bryant,  The  Poet;  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  Invita  Minerva:  Emerson,  The  Poet,  Merlin;  James 
Gates  Percival,  Awake  My  Lyre,  Invocation;  J.  H.  West,  To 
the  Muse,  After  Silence;  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  The  Lau- 
reate to  an  Academy  Class  Dinner;  Alice  Meynell,  To  one 
Poem  in  Silent  Time;  Austin  Dobson,  A  Garden  Idyl;  James 
Stevens,  A  Reply;  Richard  Middleton,  The  Artist;  Franklin 
Henry  Giddings,  Song;  Benjamin  R.  C.  Low,  Inspiration; 
Robert  Haven  Schauffler,  The  Wonderful  Hour;  Henry  A. 
Beers,  The  Thankless  Muse;  Karl  Wilson  Baker,  Days. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  165 

faith  that  he  is  not  "widowed  of  his  muse,"  ^  she  yet 
torments  him  with  all  the  ways  of  a  coquette,  so  that 
he  sadly  assures  us  his  mistress  "is  sweet  to  win, 
but  bitter  to  keep."  -  The  times  when  she  solaces 
him  may  be  pitifully  infrequent.  Rossetti,  musing 
over    Coleridge,    says    that    his    inspired    moments 

were 

Like  desert  pools  that  show  the  stars 
Once  in  long  leagues.^ 

Yet,  even  so,  upon  such  moments  of  insight  rest 
all  the  poet's  claims  for  his  superior  personality. 
It  is  the  potential  greatness  enabling  him  at  times 
to  have  speech  with  the  gods  that  makes  the  rest  of 
his  life  sacred,  Emerson  is  more  outspoken  than 
most  poets ;  he  is  not  perhaps  at  variance  with  their 
secret  convictions,  when  he  describes  himself : 

I,  who  cower  mean  and  small 

In  the  frequent  interval 

When  wisdom  not  with  me  resides.^ 

However  divine  the  singer  considers  himself  in 
comparison  with  ordinary  humanity,  he  must  admit 
that  at  times 

Discrowned  and  timid,  thoughtless,  worn. 
The  child  of  genius  sits  forlorn, 

•  •  •  « 

A    cripple   of    God,   half-true,    half-formed.^ 

*  See  Francis  Thompson,  The  Cloud's  Swan  Song. 

*  C.  G.  Roberts,  Ballade  of  the  Poet's  Thought. 

*  Sonnet  to  Coleridge. 

*  The  Poet. 

*  Emerson,  The  Poet.     See  also  George  Meredith,  Pegasus. 


i66  The  Poet's  Poet 

Like  Dante,  we  seem  disposed  to  faint  at  every 
step  in  our  revelation.  Now  a  doubt  crosses  our 
minds  whether  the  child  of  genius  in  his  crippled 
moments  is  better  fitted  than  the  rest  of  us  to  point 
out  the  pathway  to  sacred  enthusiasm.  It  appears 
that  little  verse  describing  the  poet's  afflatus  is  written 
when  the  gods  are  actually  with  him.  In  this  field, 
the  sower  sows  by  night.  Verse  on  inspiration  is 
almost  always  retrospective  or  theoretical  in  char- 
acter. It  seems  as  if  the  intermittence  of  his  inspira- 
tion filled  the  poet  with  a  wistful  curiosity  as  to 
his  nature  in  moments  of  soaring.  By  continual 
introspection  he  is  seeking  the  charm,  so  to  speak, 
that  will  render  his  afflatus  permanent.  The  rigidity 
in  much  of  such  verse  surely  betrays,  not  the  white 
heat  of  genius,  but  a  self-conscious  attitude  of 
readiness  for  the  falling  of  the  divine  spark. 

One  wonders  whether  such  preparation  has  been 
of  much  value  in  hastening  the  fire  from  heaven. 
Often  the  reader  is  impatient  to  inform  the  loud- 
voiced  suppliant  that  Baal  has  gone  a-hunting.  Yet 
it  is  alleged  that  the  most  humble  bribe  has  at  times 
sufficed  to  capture  the  elusive  divinity,  Schiller's 
rotten  apples  are  classic,  and  Emerson  lists  a  num- 
ber of  tested  expedients,  from  a  pound  of  tea  to  a 
night  in  a  strange  hotel. ^  This,  however,  is  Emer- 
son in  a  singularly  flat-footed  moment.  The  real 
poet     scoffs    at    such     suggestions.       Instead,    he 

'  See  the  essay  on  Inspiration.  Hazlitt  says  Coleridge 
liked  to  compose  walking  over  uneven  ground  or  breaking 
through  straggling  branches. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  167 

feels  that  it  is  not  for  him  to  know  the  times  and 
seasons  of  his  powers.  Indeed,  it  seems  to  him, 
sometimes,  that  pure  contrariety  marks  the  god's 
refusal  to  come  when  entreated.  Thus  we  are  told 
of  the  god  of  song, 

Vainly,  O  burning  poets ! 
Ye  wait  for  his  inspiration. 

•  •  •  • 

Hasten  back,   he  will   say,   hasten  back 
To   your   provinces    far   away ! 
There,  at  my  own  good  time 
Will  I  send  my  answer  to  you.^ 

Then,  at  the  least  expected  moment,  the  fire  may 
fall,  so  that  the  poet  is  often  filled  with  naive  wonder 
at  his  own  ability.  Thus  Alice  Meynell  greets  one 
of  her  poems, 

Who  looked  for  thee,  thou  little  song  of  mine  ? 
This  winter  of  a  silent  poet's  heart 
Is  suddenly  sweet  with  thee,  but  what  thou  art. 
Mid-winter  flower,  I  would  I  could  divine. 

But  if  the  poet  cannot  predict  the  time  of  his 
afflatus,  he  indicates  that  he  does  know  the  attitude 
of  mind  which  will  induce  it.  In  certain  quarters 
there  is  a  truly  Biblical  reliance  upon  faith  as  bringer 
of  the  gift.  A  minor  writer  assures  us,  "Ah,  if  we 
trust,  comes  the  song!"  -     Emerson  says, 

*  E.  C.  Stedman,  Apollo.  The  Hillside  Door  by  the  same 
author  also  expresses  this  idea.  See  also  Browning,  Old 
Pictures  in  Florence,  in  which  he  speaks  "of  a  gift  God 
gives  me  now  and  then."  See  also  Longfellow,  L'Envoi; 
Keats,  Ou  Receiinng  a  Laurel  Crozvn:  Cale  Young  Rice, 
Ne7i'  Dreams  for  Old;  Fiona  Macleod,  The  Founts  of  Song. 

*  Richard  Burton,  Singing  Faith. 


1 68  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  muses'  hill  by  fear  is  guarded; 
A  bolder  foot  is  still  rewarded.^ 

And  more  extreme  is  the  counsel  of  Owen  Meredith 
to  the  aspiring  artist : 

The  genius  on  thy  daily  walks 
Shall  meet,  and  take  thee  by  the  hand; 
But  serve  him  not  as  who  obeys ; 
He  is  thy  slave  if  thou  command.^ 

The  average  artist  is  probably  inclined  to  quarrel 
with  this  last  high-handed  treatment  of  the  muse. 
Reverent  humility  rather  than  arrogance  charac- 
terizes the  most  effectual  appeals  for  inspiration. 
The  faith  of  the  typical  poet  is  not  the  result  of 
boldness,  but  of  an  aspiration  so  intense  that  it 
entails  forgetfulness  of  self.  Thus  one  poet  accounts 
for  his  inspired  hour : 

Purged  with  high  thoughts  and  infinite  desire 
I  entered  fearless  the  most  holy  place ; 
Received  between  my  lips  the  sacred  fire, 
The  breath  of  inspiration  on  my  face.^ 

Another  writer  stresses  the  efficacy  of  longing  no 
less  strongly;  speaking  of 

The  unsatiated,  insatiable  desire 

Which  at  once  mocks  and  makes  all  poesy.* 

There  is  nothing  new  in  this.  It  is  only  what 
the  poet  has  implied  in  all  his  confessions.    Was  he 

*  The  Poet. 

'  The  Artist. 

'  C.  G.  Roberts,  Ave. 

*  William  Alexander,   The  Finding  of  the  Book.     See  also 
Edward   Dowden,    The  Artist's   Waiting. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  169 

inspired  by  love?  It  was  because  thwarted  love 
filled  him  with  intensest  longing.  So  with  his 
thirst  for  purity,  for  religion,  for  worldly  vanities. 
Any  desire,  be  it  fierce  enough,  and  hindered  from 
immediate  satisfaction,  may  engender  poetry.  As 
Joyce  Kilmer  phrases  it. 

Nothing  keeps  a  poet 

In  his  high  singing  mood, 
Like  unappeasable  hunger 

For  unattainable  food.^ 

But  the  poet  would  not  have  us  imagine  that  we 
have  here  sounded  the  depths  of  the  mystery. 
Aspiration  may  call  down  inspiration,  but  it  is  not 
synonymous  with  it.  Mrs.  Browning  is  fond  of 
pointing  out  this  distinction.  In  Aurora  Leigh  she 
reminds  us,  "Many  a  fervid  man  writes  books  as  cold 
and  flat  as  gravestones."  In  the  same  poem  she 
indicates  that  desire  is  merely  preliminary  to  inspira- 
tion.   There  are,  she  says, 

Two  states  of  the  recipient  artist-soul ; 

One  forward,  personal,  wanting  reverence, 

Because  aspiring  only.    We'll  be  calm, 

And  know  that  when  indeed  our  Joves  come  down, 

We  all  turn  stiller  than  we  have  ever  been. 

What  is  this  mysterious  increment,  that  must  be 
added  to  aspiration  before  it  becomes  poetically 
creative?  So  far  as  a  mere  layman  can  understand 
it,  it  is  a  sudden  arrest,  rather  than  a  satisfaction, 
of  the  poet's  longing,  for  genuine  satisfaction  would 

^Apology. 


I/O  The  Poet's  Poet 

kill  the  aspiration,  and  leave  the  poet  heavy  and 
phlegmatic.  Inspiration,  on  the  contrary,  seems  to 
give  him  a  fictitious  satisfaction;  it  is  an  arrest  of 
his  desire  that  affords  him  a  delicate  poise  and  repose, 
on  tiptoe,  so  to  speak. ^ 

Does  not  the  fact  that  inspiration  works  in  this 
manner  account  for  the  immemorial  connection  of 
poetic  creativeness  with  Bacchic  frenzy?  To  the 
aspiring  poet  wine  does  not  bring  his  mistress,  nor 
virtue,  nor  communion  with  God,  nor  any  object 
of  his  longing.  Yet  it  does  bring  a  sudden  ease  to 
his  craving.  So,  wherever  there  is  a  romantic  con- 
ception of  poetry,  one  is  apt  to  find  inspiration  com- 
pared to  intoxication. 

Such  an  idea  did  not,  of  course,  find  favor  among 
typical  eighteenth  century  writers.  Indeed,  they 
would  have  seen  more  reason  in  ascribing  their 
clear-witted  verse  to  an  ice-pack,  than  to  the  bibulous 
hours  preceding  its  application  to  the  fevered  brow. 
We  must  wait  for  William  Blake  before  we  can 
expect  Bacchus  to  be  reinstated  among  the  gods  of 
song.  Blake  does  not  disappoint  us,  for  we  find 
his  point  of  view  expressed,  elegantly  enough,  in 
his  comment  on  artists,  "And  when  they  are  drunk, 
they  always  paint  best."  - 

As  the  romantic  movement  progresses,  one  meets 
with  more  lyrical  expositions  of  the  power  in  strong 

^  Compare  Coleridge's  statement  that  poetry  is  "a  more  than 
usual  state  of  emotion  with  more  than  usual  order."  Bio- 
graphia  Literaria,  Vol.  II,  Chap.  I,  p.  14,  ed.  Henry  Nelson 
Coleridge. 

'Artist  Madmen:  On  the  Great  Encouragement  Given  by 
the  English  Nobility  and  Gentry  to  Correggio,  etc. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  171 

drink.     Burns,  especially,  is  never  tired  of  sound- 
ing its  praise.     He  exclaims, 

There's  naething  like  the  honest  nappy. 

•  •  •  • 

I've  seen  me  daist  upon  a  time 
I  scarce  could  wink  or  see  a  styme ; 

Just  ae  half  mutchkin  does  me  prime; 
Aught  less  is  little, 
Then  back  I  rattle  with  the  rhyme 
As  gleg's  a  whittle.^ 

Again  he  assures  us, 

But  browster  wives  and  whiskey  stills, 
They  are  my  muses. ^ 

Then,  in  more  exalted  mood : 

O  thou,  my  Muse,  guid  auld  Scotch  drink ! 

Whether  through  wimplin'  worms  thou  jink, 

Or,  richly  brown,  ream  o'er  the  brink 

In  glorious  faem, 

Inspire  me,  till  I  lisp  and  wink 

To  sing  thy  name.^ 

Keats    enthusiastically    concurs    in    Burns'     state- 
ments.'*    Lander,  also,  tells  us  meaningly, 

Songmen,  grasshoppers  and  nightingales 
Sing  cheerily  but  when  the  throat  is  moist.^ 

^The  First  Epistle  to  Lapraik. 
'  The  Third  Epistle  to  Lapraik. 
'Scotch  Drink. 

*  See  the  Sonnet  on  the  Cottage  Where  Burns  Was  Born, 
and  Lines  on  tlie  Mertnaid  Tavern. 
"^ Homer:  Laertes:  Agatha. 


172  The  Poet's  Poet 

James  Russell  Lowell,  in  Th£  Temptation  of  Hassan 
Khaled,  presents  the  argument  of  the  poet's  tempters 
with  charming  sympathy: 

The  vine  is  nature's  poet :  from  his  bloom 
The  air  goes  reeling,  typsy  with  perfume, 
And  when  the  sun  is  warm  within  his  blood 
It  mounts  and  sparkles  in  a  crimson  flood. 
Rich  with  dumb  songs  he  speaks  not,  till  they  find 
Interpretation  in  the  poet's  mind. 
If  wine  be  evil,  song  is  evil  too. 

Plis  Bacchic  Ode  is  full  of  the  same  enthusiasm. 
Bacchus  received  his  highest  honors  at  the  end  of 
the  last  century  from  the  decadents  in  England. 
Swinburne,^  Lionel  Johnson,-  Ernest  Dowson,^  and 
Arthur  Symonds,'*  vied  with  one  another  in  prais- 
ing inebriety  as  a  lyrical  agent.  Even  the  sober 
Watts-Dunton  ^  was  drawn  into  the  contest,  and 
warmed  to  the  theme. 

Poetry  about  the  Mermaid  Inn  is  bound  to  take 
this  tone.  From  Keats  ^  to  Josephine  Preston  Pea- 
body  '^  writers  on  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  have 
dwelt  upon  their  conviviality.  This  aspect  is 
especially  stressed  by  Alfred  Noyes,  who  imagines 
himself  carried  back  across  the  centuries  to  become 
the  Ganymede  of  the  great  poets.  All  of  the  group 
keep  him  busy.     In  particular  he  mentions  Jonson: 

*  See  Burns. 

'  See  Vinum  DcEtnonum. 

'  See  A  Villanelle  of  the  Poet's  Road. 

*  See  A  Sequence  to  Wine. 

"See  A  Toast  to  Omar  Khayyam. 
'  See  Lines  on  the  Mermaid  Inn. 
''  See  Marlowe. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  173 

And  Ben  was  there, 
Humming  a  song  upon  the  old  black  settle, 
"Or  leave  a  kiss  within  the  cup 
And  I'll  not  ask  for  wine," 
But  meanwhile,  he  drank  malmsey.^ 

Fortunately  for  the  future  of  American  verse, 
there  is  another  side  to  the  picture.  The  teetotaler 
poet  is  by  no  means  non-existent  in  the  last  century. 
Wordsworth  takes  pains  to  refer  to  himself  as  "a 
simple,  water-drinking  bard,"  -  and  in  lines  To  the 
Sons  of  Burns  he  delivers  a  very  fine  prohibition 
lecture.  Tennyson  offers  us  IVill  Waterproof's 
Lyrical  Monologue,  a  redtictio  ad  absurdum  of  the 
claims  of  the  bibulous  bard.  Then,  lest  the  tem- 
perance cause  lack  the  support  of  great  names,  Long- 
fellow causes  the  title  character  of  Michael  Angela 
to  inform  us  that  he  "loves  not  wine,"  while,  more 
recently,  E.  A.  Robinson  pictures  Shakespeare's 
inability  to  effervesce  with  his  comrades,  because, 
Ben  Jonson  confides  to  us, 

Whatso  he  drinks  that  has  an  antic  in  it, 
He's  wondering  what's  to  pay  on  his  insides.' 

No,  the  poet  will  not  allow  us  to  take  his  words 
too  seriously,  lest  we  drag  down  Apollo  to  the  level 
of  Bacchus.  In  spite  of  the  convincing  realism  in 
certain  eulogies,  it  is  clear  that  to  the  poet,  as  to 
the  convert  at  the  eucharist,  wine  is  only  a  symbol  of 

'  Tales  of  the  Mermaid  Inn. 

*  See    The    Waggoner. 

*  Ben  Jonson  Entertains  a  Man  from  Stratford.  See  also 
Poe's  letter,  April  i,  1841,  to  Snodgrass,  on  the  unfortunate 
results  of  his  intemperance. 


174  The  Poet's  Poet 

a  purely  spiritual  ecstasy.  But  if  intoxication  is 
only  a  figure  of  speech,  it  is  a  significant  one,  and 
perhaps  some  of  the  other  myths  describing  the 
poet's  sensations  during  inspiration  may  put  us  on 
the  trail  of  its  meaning.  Of  course,  in  making  such 
an  assumption,  we  are  precisely  like  the  expounder 
of  Plato's  myths,  who  is  likely  to  say,  "Here  Plato 
was  attempting  to  shadow  forth  the  inexpressible. 
Now  listen,  and  I  will  explain  exactly  what  he 
meant."     Notwithstanding,  we  must  proceed. 

The  device  of  Chaucer's  House  of  Fame,  wherein 
the  poet  is  carried  to  celestial  realms  by  an  eagle, 
occasionally  occurs  to  the  modern  poet  as  an  account 
of  his  Aufschwung.  Thus  Keats,  in  Lines  to  Apollo, 
avers. 

Aye,  when  the  soul  is  fled 
Too  high  above  our  head. 
Affrighted  do  we  gaze 
After  its  airy  maze 
As  doth  a  mother  wild 
When  her  young  infant  child 
Is  in  an  eagle's  claws, 

"Poetry,  my  life,  my  eagle!"  ^  cries  Mrs.  Browning, 
likening  herself  to  Ganymede,  ravished  from  his 
sheep  to  the  summit  of  Olympus.  The  same  atti- 
tude is  apparent  in  most  of  her  poems,  for  Mrs. 
Browning,  in  singing  mood,  is  precisely  like  a  child 
in  a  swing,  shouting  with  delight  at  every  fresh 
sensation  of  soaring.^ 

*  Aurora  Leigh, 

*  See  J.  G.  Percival,  Genius  Awaking,  for  the  same  figure. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  175 

Again,  the  crash  of  the  poet's  inspiration  upon 
his  ordinary  modes  of  thought  is  compared  to  "fear- 
ful claps  of  thunder,"  by  Keats^  and  others.-  Or, 
more  often,  his  moment  of  sudden  insight  seems 
a  lightning  flash  upon  the  dark  ways  in  which  he 
is  ordinarily  groping.  Keats  says  that  his  early 
visions  were  seen  as  through  a  rift  of  sheet  light- 
ning.^ Emerson's  impression  is  the  same :  visions 
come  "as  if  life  were  a  thunderstorm  wherein  you 
can  see  by  a  flash  the  horizon,  and  then  cannot  see 
your  hand."  ■*     Likewise  Alexander  Smith  declares, 

Across  the  midnight  sea  of  mind 

A  thought  comes  streaming  like  a  blazing  ship 

Upon  a  mighty  wind, 

A  terror  and  a  glory !     Shocked  with  light, 

His  boundless  being  glares  aghast.* 

Perhaps  this  is  a  true  expression  of  the  poet's 
feelings  during  the  deepest  inspiration,  yet  we  are 
minded  of  Elijah's  experience  with  the  wind  and 
the  fire  and  the  still  small  voice.  So  we  cannot 
help  sympathizing  with  Browning's  protest  against 
"friend  Naddo's"  view  that  genius  is  a  matter  of 
bizarre  and  grandiose  sensations."  At  least  it  is 
pleasant  to  find  verse,  by  minor  writers  though  it 
be,  describing  the  quietude  and  naturalness  of  the 
poet's  best  moments.  Thus  Holmes  tells  us  of  his 
inspiration  : 

^  See  Sleep  and  Poetry. 

*  See  The  Master,  A.  E.  Cheney. 

*  See  The  Epistle  to  George  Keats. 

*  Essay  on  Inspiration. 

*  A  Life  Drama. 

*  Sordello. 


176  The  Poet's  Poet 

Soft  as  the  moonbeams  when  they  sought 

Endymion's  fragrant  bower, 
She  parts  the  whispering  leaves  of  thought 

To  show  her  full-leaved  flower.^ 

Edwin  Markham  says, 

She  comes  like  the  hush  and  beauty  of  the  night.^ 

And  Richard  Watson  Gilder's  mood  is  the  same: 

How  to  the  singer  comes  his  song? 

How  to  the  summer  fields 

Come  flowers?     How  yields 

Darkness  to  happy  dawn  ?    How  doth  the  night 

Bring  stars  ?  ^ 

Various  as  are  these  accounts  which  poets  give 
of  their  inspired  moments,  all  have  one  point  in 
common,  since  they  indicate  that  in  such  moments 
the  poet  is  wholly  passive.  His  thought  is  literally 
given  to  him.  Edward  Dowden,  in  a  sonnet.  Wise 
Passiveness,  says  this  plainly : 

Think  you  I  choose  or  that  or  this  to  sing? 
I  lie  as  patient  as  yon  wealthy  stream 
Dreaming  among  green  fields  its  summer  dream, 
Which  takes  whate'er  the  gracious  hours  will  bring 
Into  its  quiet  bosom. 

To  the   same  effect  is  a  somewhat  prosaic  poem. 
Accident  in  Art,  by  Richard  Hovey.     He  inquires, 

What  poet  has  not  found  his  spirit  kneeling 
A  sudden  at  the  sound  of  such  or  such 

*  Inz/ita  Minerva. 

'  Poetry. 

'How  to  the  Singer  Comes  His  Songf 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  177 

Strange  verses  staring  from  his  manuscript, 
Written,  he  knows  not  how,  but  which  will  sound 
Like  trumpets  down  the  years. 

Doubtless  it  is  a  very  natural  result  of  his  resig- 
nation to  this  creative  force  that  one  of  the  poet's 
profoundest  sensations  during  his  afflatus  should 
be  that  of  reverence  for  his  gift.  Longfellow  and 
Wordsworth  sometimes  speak  as  if  the  composition 
of  their  poems  were  a  ceremony  comparable  to  hig 
mass.  At  times  one  must  admit  that  verse  describ- 
ing such  an  attitude  has  a  charm  of  its  own.^  In 
The  Song-Tree  Alfred  Noyes  describes  his  first  sen- 
sation as  a  conscious  poet: 

The  first  note  that  I  heard, 
A  magical  undertone, 
Was  sweeter  than  any  bird 
— Or  so  it  seemed  to  me — 
And  my  tears  ran  wild. 
This  tale,  this  tale  is  true. 
The  light  was  growing  gray, 
And  the  rhymes  ran  so  sweet 
(For  I  was  only  a  child) 
That  I  knelt  down  to  pray. 

But  our  sympathy  with  this  little  poet  would  not  be 
nearly  so  intense  were  he  twenty  years  older.  When 
it  is  said  of  a  mature  poetess, 

She  almost  shrank 

To  feel  the  secret  and  expanding  might 

Of  her  own  mind,- 

*  Qsmpare    Browning's    characterization    of    the    afflatus    of 
Eglamor  in  Sordello,  Book  II. 
'  The  Last  Hours  of  a  Young  Poetess,  Lucy  Hooper. 


178  The  Poet's  Poet 

the  reader  does  not  always  remain  in  a  sympa- 
thetically prayerful  mind.  Such  reverence  paid  by 
the  poet  to  his  gift  calls  to  mind  the  multiple  Miss 
Beauchamp,  of  psychologic  fame,  and  her  comment 
on  the  vagaries  of  her  various  personalities,  "But 
after  all,  they  are  all  me!"'  Too  often,  when  the 
poet  is  kneeling  in  adoration  of  his  Muse,  the 
irreverent  reader  is  likely  to  suspect  that  he  realizes, 
only  too  well,  that  it  is  "all  me." 

However,  if  the  Philistine  reader  sets  up  as  a 
critic,  he  must  make  good  his  charges.  Have  we 
any  real  grounds  for  declaring  that  the  alleged 
divinity  who  inspires  the  poet  is  merely  his  own 
intelligence,  or  lack  of  it?  Perhaps  not.  And  yet 
the  dabbler  in  psychology  finds  a  good  deal  to  indi- 
cate the  poet's  impression  that  the  "subconscious" 
is  shaping  his  verse.  Shelley  was  especially  fasci- 
nated by  the  mysterious  regions  of  his  mind  lying 
below  the  threshold  of  his  ordinary  thought.  In 
fact,  some  of  his  prose  speculations  are  in  remark- 
able sympathy  with  recent  scientific  papers  on  the 
subject.^  And  in  Mont  Blanc  he  expresses  his  won- 
der at  the  phenomenon  of  thought: 

The  everlasting  universe  of  things 
Flows  through  the  mind,  and  rolls  its  rapid  waves, 
Now  dark — now  glittering — now  reflecting  gloom — 
Now  lending  splendor,  where  from  secret  springs 
The  source  of  human  thought  its  tribute  brings 
Of  waters. 

*  See  Speculations  on  Metaphysics,  Works,  Vol.  VI,  p.  282, 
edited  by  Buxton  Forman. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  179 

Again,  in  The  Defense  of  Poetry  he  says, 

The  mind  in  creation  is  a  fading  coal,  which  some 
invisible  infUience.  like  an  inconstant  wind,  awakens 
to  transitory  brightness ;  this  power  arises  from  within, 
like  the  color  of  a  flower  which  fades  and  changes 
as  it  is  developed,  and  the  conscious  portions  of  our 
nature  are  unprophetic  either  of  its  approach  or  de- 
parture. 

Wordsworth,  too,  thinks  of  his  gift  as  arising 
from  the  depths  of  his  mind,  which  are  not  subject 
to  conscious  control.     He  apprises  us, 

A  plastic  power 
Abode  with  me,  a  forming  hand,  at  times 
Rebellious,  acting  in  a  devious  mood, 
A  local  spirit  of  its  own,  at  war 
With  general  tendency,  but  for  the  most 
Subservient  strictly  to  external  things 
With  w^hich  it  communed.    An  auxiliar  light 
Came  from  my  mind  which  on  the  setting  sun 
Bestowed  new  splendor — ^ 

Occasionally  the  sudden  lift  of  these  submerged 
ideas  to  consciousness  is  expressed  by  the  figure  of 
an  earthquake.  Aurora  Leigh  says  that  upon  her 
first  impulse  to  write,  her  nature  was  shaken, 

As  the  earth 
Plunges  in  fury,  when  the  internal  fires 
Have  reached  and  pricked  her  heart,  and  throwing  flat 
The  marts  and  temples,  the  triumphal  gates 
And  towers  of  observation,  clears  herself 
To  elemental  freedom. 

^  The  Prelude. 


i8o  The  Poet's  Poet 

We  have  a  grander  expression  of  the  idea  from 
Robert  Browning-,  who  relates  how  the  vision  of 
Sordello  arises  to  consciousness : 

Upthrust,  out-staggering  on  the  world, 
Subsiding  into  shape,  a  darkness  rears 
Its  outline,  kindles  at  the  core — . 

Is  this  to  say  that  the  poet's  intuitions,  apparently 
so  sudden,  have  really  been  long  germinating  in 
the  obscure  depths  of  his  mind?  Then  it  is  in 
tune  with  the  idea,  so  prevalent  in  English  verse, 
that  in  sleep  a  mysterious  undercurrent  of  imagina- 
tive power  becomes  accessible  to  the  poet. 

"Ever  when  slept  the  poet  his  dreams  were 
music,"  ^  says  Richard  Gilder,  and  the  line  seems 
trite  to  us.  There  was  surely  no  reason  why  Keats' 
title.  Sleep  and  Poetry,  should  have  appeared  ludi- 
crous to  his  critics,  for  from  the  time  of  Caedmon 
onward  English  writers  have  been  sensitive  to  a 
connection  here.  The  stereotyped  device  of  making 
poetry  a  dream  vision,  so  popular  in  the  middle 
ages, — and  even  the  prominence  of  Night  Thoughts 
in  eighteenth  century  verse — testify  that  a  coupling 
of  poetry  and  sleep  has  always  seemed  natural  to 
poets.  Coleridge,-  Keats,  Shelley,^ — it  is  the  roman- 
ticists who  seem  to  have  depended  most  upon  sleep 
as  bringer  of   inspiration.     And   once  more,   it  is 

^The  Poet's  Sleep. 

'  See  his  account  of  the  composition  of  Kubla  Khan. 

*  See  Alastor,  and  Prince  Athanase.  See  also  Edmund 
Gosse,  Swinburne ,  p.  29,  where  Swinburne  says  he  produced 
the  first  three  stanzas  of  A  Vision  of  Spring  in  his  sleep. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  i8i 

Shelley  who  shows  himself  most  keenly  aware  that, 
asleep  or  waking,  the  poet  feels  his  afflatus  coming 
in  the  same  manner.  Thus  he  tells  us  of  the  singer 
in  Prifice  Athaiiase: 

And  through  his  sleep,  and  o'er  each  waking  hour 
Thoughts  after  thoughts,  unresting  multitudes, 
Were  driven  within  him  by  some  secret  power 
Which  bade  them  blaze,  and  live,  and  roll  afar, 
Like  lights  and  sounds,  from  haunted  tower  to  tower. 

Probably  our  jargon  of  the  subconscious  would 
not  much  impress  poets,  even  those  whom  we  have 
just  quoted.  Is  this  the  only  cause  we  can  give, 
Shelley  might  ask,  why  the  poet  should  not  rever- 
ence his  gift  as  something  apart  from  himself  and 
truly  divine?  If,  after  the  fashion  of  modern 
psychology,  we  denote  by  the  subconscious  mind 
only  the  welter  of  myriad  forgotten  details  of 
our  daily  life,  what  is  there  here  to  account  for 
poesy?  The  remote,  inaccessible  chambers  of  our 
mind  may,  to  be  sure,  be  more  replete  with  curious 
lumber  than  those  continually  swept  and  garnished 
for  everyday  use,  yet,  even  so,  there  is  nothing 
in  any  memory,  as  such,  to  account  for  the  fact  that 
poetry  reveals  things  to  us  above  and  beyond  any 
of  our  actual  experiences  in  this  world. 

Alchemist  Memory  turned  his  past  to  gold,^ 

says  Alexander  Smith  of  his  poet,  and  as  an  account 
of  inspiration,  the  line  sounds  singularly  flat.    There 
M  Life  Drama. 


i82  The  Poet's  Poet 

is  nothing  here  to  distinguish  the  poet   from  any 
octogenarian  dozing  in  his  armchair. 

Is  Memory  indeed  the  only  Muse?  Not  unless 
she  is  a  far  grander  figure  than  we  ordinarily  sup- 
pose. Of  course  she  has  been  exalted  by  certain 
artists.  There  is  Richard  Wagner,  with  his  defini- 
tion of  art  as  memory  of  one's  past  youth,  or — to 
stay  closer  home — Wordsworth,  with  his  theory  of 
poetry  as  emotion  recollected  in  tranquillity, — such 
artists  have  a  high  regard  for  memory.  Still,  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  is  tolerably  representative  of  the 
nineteenth  century  attitude  when  he  points  memory 
to  a  second  place.  It  is  only  the  aged  poet,  con- 
scious that  his  powers  are  decaying,  to  whom  Holmes 
offers  the  consolation, 

Live  in  the  past ;  await  no  more 
The  rush  of  heaven-sent  wings; 
Earth  still  has  music  left  in  store 
While  memory  sighs  and  sings.^ 

But,  though  he  would  discourage  us  from  our 
attempt  to  chain  his  genius,  like  a  ghost,  to  his  past 
life  in  this  world,  the  poet  is  inclined  to  admit  that 
Mnemosyne,  in  her  true  grandeur,  has  a  fair  claim 
to  her  title  as  mother  of  the  muses.  The  memories 
of  prosaic  men  may  be,  as  we  have  described  them, 
short  and  sordid,  concerned  only  with  their  existence 
here  and  now,  but  the  recollection  of  poets  is  a 
divine  thing,  reaching  back  to  the  days  when  their 
spirits  were  untrammeled  by  the  body,  and  they 
gazed  upon  ideal  beauty,  when,  as  Plato  says, 

^Invito  Minerva. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  183 

they  saw  a  vision  and  were  initiated  into  the  most 
blessed  mysteries  .  .  .  beholding  apparitions  innocent 
and  simple  and  calm  and  happy  as  in  a  mystery ;  shin- 
ing in  pure  light,  pure  themselves  and  not  yet  enshrined 
in  the  living  tomb  which  we  carry  about,  now  that  we 
are  imprisoned  in  the  body,  as  in  an  oyster  shell. ^ 

For  the  poet  is  apt  to  transfer  Plato's  praise  of  the 
philosopher  to  himself,  declaring  that  "he  alone  has 
wings,  and  this  is  just,  for  he  is  always,  according 
to  the  measure  of  his  abilities,  clinging  in  recollec- 
tion to  those  things  in  which  God  abides,  and  in 
beholding  which  He  is  what  He  is."  - 

n  the  poet  exalts  memory  to  this  station,  he  may 
indeed  claim  that  he  is  not  furtively  adoring  his 
own  petty  powers,  when  he  reverences  the  visions 
which  Mnemosyne  vouchsafes  to  him.  And  indeed 
Plato's  account  of  memory  is  congenial  to  many 
poets.  Shelley  is  probably  the  most  serious  of  the 
nineteenth  century  singers  in  claiming  an  ideal  life 
for  the  soul,  before  its  birth  into  this  world. ^  Words- 
worth's adherence  to  this  view  is  as  widely  known 
as  the  Ode  on  Immortality.  As  an  explanation  for 
inspiration,  the  theory  recurs  in  verse  of  other  poets. 
One  writer  inquires, 

Are  these  wild  thoughts,  thus  fettered  in  my  rhymes, 
Indeed  the  product  of  my  heart  and  brain?* 

and  decides  that  the  only  way  to  account  for  the 

occasional  gleams  of  insight  in  his  verse  is  by  assum- 

^  Phccdrus,  250. 
^  Ibid.,  24g. 

'  See  Prince  Athattase.     For   Matthew  Arnold's   views,  see 
Self  Deception. 

*  Henry  Timrod,  Sonnet. 


184  The  Poet's  Poet 

ing  a  prenatal  life  for  the  soul.  Another  maintains 
of  poetry, 

Her  touch  is  a  vibration  and  a  light 
From  worlds  before  and  after.^ 

Perhaps  Alice  Meynell's  A  Song  of  Derivations  is 
the  most  natural  and  unforced  of  these  verses.  She 
muses : 

.  .  .  Mixed  with  memories  not  my  own 

The  sweet  streams  throng  into  my  breast. 

Before  this  life  began  to  be 

The  happy  songs  that  wake  in  me 

Woke  long  ago,  and  far  apart. 

Heavily  on  this  little  heart 

Presses  this  immortality. 

This  poem,  however,  is  not  so  consistent  as  the 
others  with  the  Platonic  theory  of  reminiscence.  It 
is  a  previous  existence  in  this  world,  rather  than  in 
ideal  realms,  which  Alice  Meynell  assumes  for  her 
inspirations.     She  continues, 

I  come  from  nothing,  but  from  where 
Come  the  undying  thoughts  I  bear? 
Down  through  long  links  of  death  and  birth, 
From  the  past  poets  of  the  earth, 
My  immortality  is  there. 

Certain  singers  who  seem  not  to  have  been  affected 
by  the  philosophical  argument  for  reminiscence 
have  concurred  in  Alice  Meynell's  last  statement,  and 
have   felt  that  the  mysterious  power  which  is  im- 

*  Edwin  Markham,  Poetry.  Another  recent  poem  on  pre- 
natal inspiration  is  The  Dream  I  Dreamed  Before  I  Was 
Born  (1919),  by  Dorothea  Laurence  Mann. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  185 

pressing  itself  in  their  verse  is  the  genius  of  dead 
poets,  mysteriously  finding  expression  in  their  dis- 
ciple's song.  A  characteristic  example  of  this  atti- 
tude is  Alfred  Noyes'  account  of  Chapman's  sensa- 
tions, when  he  attempted  to  complete  Marlowe's 
Hero  and  Lemider.    Chapman  tells  his  brother  poets : 

I  have  thought,  sometimes,  when  I  have  tried 
To  work  his  will,  the  hand  that  moved  my  pen 
Was  mine  and  yet — not  mine.    The  bodily  mask 
Is  mine,  and  sometimes  dull  as  clay  it  sleeps 
With  old  Musaeus.     Then  strange  flashes  come, 
Oracular  glories,  visionary  gleams. 
And  the  mask  moves,  not  of  itself,  and  sings.^ 

The  best-known  instance  of  such  a  belief  is,  of 
course,  Browning's  appeal  at  the  beginning  of  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,  that  his  dead  wife  shall  inspire 
his  poetry. 

One  is  tempted  to  surmise  that  many  of  our 
young  poets,  especially  have  nourished  a  secret 
conviction  that  their  genius  has  such  an  origin  as 
this.  Let  there  be  a  deification  of  some  poet  who 
has  aroused  their  special  enthusiasm, — a  mysterious 
resemblance  to  his  style  in  the  works  which  arise  in 
their  minds  spontaneously,  in  moments  of  ecstasy, — 
what  is  a  more  natural  result  than  the  assumption 
that  their  genius  is,  in  some  strange  manner,  a  con- 
tinuation  of   his?-      The   tone   of   certain    Shelley 

^  At  the  Sign  of  the  Golden  Shoe. 

'Keats  wrote  to  Haydn  that  he  took  encouragement  in 
the  notion  of  some  good  genius — probably  Shakespeare — 
presiding  over  him.  Swinburne  was  often  called  Shelley 
reborn. 


i86  The  Poet's  Poet 

worshipers  suggests  such  a  hypothesis  as  an  account 
for  their  poems.  Bayard  Taylor  seems  to  be  an 
exception  when,  after  pleading  that  Shelley  infuse 
his  spirit  into  his  disciple's  verses,  he  recalls  him- 
self, and  concludes : 

I  do  but  rave,  for  it  is  better  thus ; 

Were  once  thy  starry  nature  given  to  mine, 

In  the  one  life  which  would  encircle  us 

My  voice  would  melt,  my  voice  be  lost  in  thine ; 

Better  to  bear  the  far  sublimer  pain 

Of  thought  that  has  not  ripened  into  speech, 

To  hear  in  silence  Truth  and  Beauty  sing 

Divinely  to  the  brain; 

For  thus  the  poet  at  the  last  shall  reach 

His  own  soul's  voice,  nor  crave  a  brother's  string.^ 

In  the  theory  that  the  genius  of  a  past  poet  may 
be  reincarnated,  there  is,  indeed,  a  danger  that 
keeps  it  from  appealing  to  all  poets.  It  tallies  too 
well  with  the  charge  of  imitativeness,  if  not  down- 
right plagiarism,  often  brought  against  a  new 
singer.^  If  the  poet  feels  that  his  genius  comes 
from  a  power  outside  himself,  he  yet  paradoxically 
insists  that  it  must  be  peculiarly  his  own.  There- 
fore Mrs.  Browning,  through  Aurora  Leigh,  shrinks 
from  the  suspicion  that  her  gift  may  be  a  heritage 
from  singers  before  her.     She  wistfully  inquires: 

My  own  best  poets,  am  I  one  with  you? 

.  .  .  When  my  joy  and  pain, 

My  thought  and  aspiration,  like  the  stops 

'  Ode  to  Shelley. 

*  See  Margaret   Steele  Anderson,   Other  People's   Wreaths, 
and  John   Drinkwater,  My  Songs. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  187 

Of  pipe  or  flute,  are  absolutely  dumb 
Unless  melodious,  do  you  play  on  me, 
My  pipers,  and  if,  sooth,  you  did  not  play, 
Would  no  sound  come?    Or  is  the  music  mine; 
As  a  man's  voice  or  breath  is  called  his  own, 
Inbreathed  by  the  life-breather? 

Are  we  exaggerating  our  modern  poet's  convic- 
tion that  a  spirit  not  his  own  is  inspiring  him? 
Does  he  not  rather  feel  self-sufficient  as  compared 
with  the  earlier  singers,  who  expressed  such  naive 
dependence  upon  the  Muse?  We  have  been  using 
the  name  Muse  in  this  essay  merely  as  a  figure  of 
speech,  and  is  this  not  the  poet's  usage  when  he 
addresses  her?  The  casual  reader  is  inclined  to 
say,  yes,  that  a  belief  in  the  Muse  is  indeed  dead. 
It  would  be  absurd  on  the  face  of  it,  he  might  say, 
to  expect  a  belief  in  this  pagan  figure  to  persist  after 
all  the  rest  of  the  Greek  theogony  has  become  a 
mere  literary  device  to  us.  This  may  not  be  a 
reliable  supposition,  since  as  a  matter  of  fact  Milton 
and  Dante  impress  us  as  being  quite  as  deeply  sin- 
cere as  Homer,  when  they  call  upon  the  Muse  to 
aid  them  in  their  song.  But  at  any  rate  everyone 
is  conscious  that  such  a  belief  has  degenerated 
before  the  eighteenth  century.  The  complacent 
turner  of  couplets  felt  no  genuine  need  for  any  Muse 
but  his  own  keen  intelligence;  accordingly,  though 
the  machinery  of  invocation  persists  in  his  poetry, 
it  is  as  purely  an  introductory  flourish  as  is  the  orna- 
mented initial  letter  of  a  poem.  Indeed,  as  the  cen- 
tury progresses,  not  even  the  pose  of  serious  prayer 


1 88  The  Poet's  Poet 

is  always  kept  up.  John  Hughes  is  perhaps  the 
most  persistent  and  sober  intreater  of  the  Muse 
whom  we  find  during  this  period,  yet  when  he  com- 
pHments  the  Muse  upon  her  appearance  "at  Lucinda's 
tea-table,"  ^  one  feels  that  all  awe  of  her  has  van- 
ished. It  is  no  wonder  that  James  Thomson,  writ- 
ing verses  On  the  Death  of  His  Mother,  should 
disclaim  the  artificial  aid  of  the  muses,  saying  that 
his  own  deep  feeling  was  enough  to  inspire  him. 
As  the  romantic  movement  progressed,  it  would  be 
easy  to  show  that  distaste  for  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury mannerism  resulted  in  more  and  more  flippant 
treatment  of  the  goddesses.  Beattie  refers  to  a 
contemporary's  "reptile  Muse,  swollen  from  the 
sty."  -  Burns  alludes  to  his  own  Muse  as  a  "tapit- 
less  ramfeezled  hizzie,"  ^  and  sets  the  fashion  for 
succeeding  writers,  who  so  multiply  the  original 
nine  that  each  poet  has  an  individual  muse,  a  sorry 
sort  of  guardian-angel,  whom  he  is  fond  of  berating 
for  her  lack  of  ability.  One  never  finds  a  writer 
nowadays,  with  courage  to  refer  to  his  muse  other- 
wise than  apologetically.  The  usual  tone  is  that  of 
Andrew  Lang,  when  he  confesses,  apropos  of  the 
departure  of  his  poetic  gift: 

'Twas  not  much  at  any  time 
She  could  hitch  into  a  rhyme, 
Never  was  the  muse  sublime 
Who  has  fled.* 

*  See  On  Lucinda's  Tea-table. 

'  See  On  a  Report  of  a  Monument  to  a  Late  Author. 

*  See  the  Epistle  to  Lapraik. 

*  A  Poet's  Apology. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  189 

Yet  one  would  be  wrong  in  maintaining  that  the 
genuine  poet  of  to-day  feels  a  slighter  dependence 
upon  a  spirit  of  song  than  did  the  world's  earlier 
singers.  There  are,  of  course,  certain  poetasters  now, 
as  always,  whose  verse  is  ground  out  as  if  by  ma- 
chinery, and  who  are  as  little  likely  to  call  upon  an 
outside  power  to  aid  them  as  is  the  horse  that  treads 
the  cider  mill.  But  among  true  poets,  if  the  spirit 
who  inspires  poesy  is  a  less  definitely  personified 
figure  than  of  old,  she  is  no  less  a  sincerely  conceived 
one  and  reverently  worshiped.  One  doubts  if  there 
could  be  found  a  poet  of  merit  who  would  disagree 
with  Shelley's  description  of  poetry  as  "the  inter- 
penetration  of  a  diviner  nature  through  our  own."  ^ 

What  is  the  poet's  conception  of  such  a  divinity? 
It  varies,  of  course.  There  is  the  occasional  belief, 
just  mentioned,  in  the  transmigration  of  genius,  but 
that  goes  back,  in  the  end,  to  the  belief  that  all 
genius  is  a  memory  of  pre-existence ;  that  is,  dropping 
(or  varying)  the  myth,  that  the  soul  of  the  poet  is 
not  chained  to  the  physical  world,  but  has  the  power 
of  discerning  the  things  which  abide.  And  this, 
again,  links  up  with  what  is  perhaps  the  commonest 
form  of  invocation  in  modern  poetry,  namely,  prayer 
that  God,  the  spirit  of  the  universe,  may  inspire  the 
poet.  For  what  does  the  poet  mean  when  he  calls 
himself  the  voice  of  God,  but  that  he  is  intuitively 
aware  of  the  eternal  verities  in  the  world?  Poets 
who  speak  in  this  way  ever  conceive  of  God  as 
Shelley  did,  in  what  is  perhaps  the  most  profoundly 

^  Defence  of  Poetry. 


190  The  Poet's  Poet 

sincere  invocation  of  the  last  century,  his  Hymn  to 
Intellectual  Beauty.    All  poets  are  idealists. 

There  is  yet  another  view  of  the  spirit  who 
inspires  poetry,  which  may  seem  more  characteristic 
of  our  poets  than  are  these  others.  It  is  expressed 
in  the  opening  of  Shelley's  Alastor,  and  informs  the 
whole  of  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind.  It  pervades 
Wordsworth,  for  if  he  seldom  calls  upon  his  natural 
environment  as  muse,  he  is  yet  profoundly  conscious 
that  his  song  is  an  inflowing  from  the  heart  of 
nature.  This  power  has  become  such  a  familiar 
divinity  to  later  singers  that  they  are  scarcely  aware 
how  great  is  their  dependence  upon  her.  There  i3 
nothing  artificial  or  in  any  sense  affected  in  the 
modern  poet's  conviction  that  in  walking  out  to  meet 
nature  he  is,  in  fact,  going  to  the  source  of  poetic 
power.  Perhaps  nineteenth  and  twentieth  century 
writers,  with  their  trust  in  the  power  of  nature  to 
breathe  song  into  their  hearts,  are  closer  to  the 
original  faith  in  the  muses  than  most  of  the  poets 
who  have  called  the  sisters  by  name  during  the 
intervening  centuries.  This  deification  of  nature, 
like  the  other  modern  conceptions  of  the  spirit  of 
song,  signifies  the  poet's  need  of  bringing  himself 
into  harmony  with  the  world-spirit,  which  moulds 
the  otherwise  chaotic  universe  into  those  forms  of 
harmony  and  beauty  which  constitute  poetry. 

Whether  the  poet  ascribes  his  infilling  to  a  specific 
goddess  of  song  or  to  a  mysterious  harmony  between 
his  soul  and  the  world  spirit,  a  coming  "into  tune 
with  the  infinite,"  as  it  has  been  called,  the  mode 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  191 

of  his  communion  is  identical.  There  is  a  frenzy 
of  desire  so  intolerable  that  it  suddenly  fails,  leav- 
ing the  poet  in  trancelike  passivity  while  the  revela- 
tion is  given  to  him, — ancient  and  modern  writers 
alike  describe  the  experience  thus.  And  modern 
poets,  no  less  than  ancient  ones,  feel  that,  before 
becoming  the  channel  of  world  meaning,  they  must 
be  deprived  of  their  own  petty,  egocentric  thoughts. 
So  Keats  avers  of  the  singer, 

One  hour,  half-idiot,  he  stands  by  mossy  waterfall ; 
The  next  he  writes  his  soul's  memorial.^ 

So   Shelley  describes   the  experience : 

Meaning  on  his  vacant  mind 
Flashed  like  strong  inspiration.^ 

The  poet  is  not,  he  himself  avers,  merely  thinking 
about  things.  He  becomes  one  with  them.  In  this 
sense  all  poets  are  pantheists,  and  the  flash  of  their 
inspiration  means  the  death  of  their  personal  thought, 
enabling  them,  like  Lucy,  to  be 

Rolled  round  in  earth's  diurnal  course 
With  rocks  and  stones  and  trees. 

Hence  the  singer  has  always  been  called  a  mad- 
man. The  modern  writer  cannot  escape  Plato's 
conclusion. 

There  is  no  invention  in  him  (the  poet)  until  he 
has  been  inspired  and  is  out  of  his  senses,  and  the 

^A  Visit  to  Burns'  Country. 
*  A  las  tor. 


192  The  Poet's  Poet 

mind  is  no  longer  in  him :  when  he  has  not  attained 
to  this  state  he  is  powerless  and  unable  to  utter  his 
oracles.^ 

And  again, 

There  is  a  .  .  .  kind  of  madness  which  is  a  posses- 
sion of  the  Muses;  this  enters  into  a  delicate  and 
virgin  soul,  and  there  inspiring  frenzy,  awakens  lyric 
and  all  other  numbers.  .  .  .  But  he  who,  not  being 
inspired,  and  having  no  touch  of  madness  in  his  soul, 
comes  to  the  door  and  thinks  he  will  get  into  the  temple 
by  the  help  of  art,  he,  I  say,  and  his  poetry  are  not 
admitted ;  the  sane  man  is  nowhere  at  all  when  he 
enters  into  rivalry  with  the  madman.^ 

Even  Aristotle,  that  sanest  of  philosophers,  so  far 
agrees  with  Plato  as  to  say. 

Poetry  implies  either  a  happy  gift  of  nature,  or  a 
strain  of  madness.  In  the  one  case,  a  man  can  take 
the  mold  of  any  character;  in  the  other  he  is  lifted 
out  of  his  proper  self.^ 

One  must  admit  that  poets  nowadays  are  not 
always  so  frank  as  earlier  ones  in  describing  their 
state  of  mind.  Now  that  the  lunatic  is  no  longer 
placed  in  the  temple,  but  in  the  hospital,  the  popular 
imputation  of  insanity  to  the  poet  is  not  always 
favorably  received.  Occasionally  he  regards  it  as 
only  another  unjust  charge  brought  against  him  by 
a  hostile  world.  Thus  a  brother  poet  has  said  that 
George  Meredith's  lot  was 

^  Ion,  §534- 

*  Phcedrus,  §  245. 

*  Poetics.  XVII. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  193 

Like  Lear's — for  he  had  felt  the  sting 
Of  all  too  greatly  giving 
The  kingdom  of  his  mind  to  those 
Who  for  it  deemed  him  mad.^ 

In  so  far  as  the  world's  pronouncement  is  based 
upon  the  oracles  to  which  the  poet  gives  utterance, 
he  always  repudiates  the  charge  of  madness.  Such 
various  poets  as  Jean  Ingelow,"  James  Thomson,  B. 
V.,^  Helen  Hunt  Jackson,*  Alice  Cary,^  and  George 
Edward  Woodberry,*^  concur  in  the  judgment  that 
the  poet  is  called  insane  by  the  rabble  simply  because 
they  are  blind  to  the  ideal  world  in  which  he  lives. 
Like  the  cave-dwellers  of  Plato's  myth,  men  resent 
it  when  the  seer,  be  he  prophet  or  philosopher,  tells 
them  that  there  are  things  more  real  than  the  shadows 
on  the  wall  with  which  they  amuse  themselves.  Not 
all  the  writers  just  named  are  equally  sure  that  they, 
rather  than  the  world,  are  right.  The  women  are 
thoroughly  optimistic.  Mr.  Woodberry,  though  he 
leaves  the  question,  whether  the  poet's  beauty  is  a 
delusion,  unanswered  in  the  poem  where  he  broaches 
it,  has  betrayed  his  faith  in  the  ideal  realms  every- 
where in  his  writings.  James  Thomson,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  not  at  all  sure  that  the  world  is  wrong  in 
its  doubt  of  ideal  truth.  The  tone  of  his  poem, 
Tasso  and  Leo)iora,  is  very  gloomy.  The  Italian 
poet  is  shown  in  prison,  reflecting  upon  his   faith 

*  Cale  Young  Rice,  Meredith. 
'  See  Gladys  and  Her  Island. 

*  See  Tasso  to  Leonora. 

*  See  The  Singer's  Hills. 
°  See  Genius. 

*  See  He  Ate  the  Laurel  and  is  Mad. 


194  The  Poet's  Poet 

in   the   ideal    realms   where   eternal   beauty   dwells. 

He  muses, 

Yes — as  Love  is  truer  far 

Than  all  other  things ;  so  are 

Life  and  Death,  the  World  and  Time 

Mere  false  shows  in  some  great  Mime 

By  dreadful  mystery  sublime. 

But  at  the  end  Tasso's   faith  is  troubled,  and  he 

ponders, 

For  were  life  no  flitting  dream. 
Were  things  truly  what  they  seem, 
Were  not  all  this  world-scene  vast 
But  a  shade  in  Time's  stream  glassed; 
Were  the  moods  we  now  display 
Less  phantasmal  than  the  clay 
In  which  our  poor  spirits  clad 
Act  this  vision,  wild  and  sad, 
I  must  be  mad,  mad,— how  mad ! 

However,  this  is  aside  from  the  point.  The  aver- 
age poet  is  as  firmly  convinced  as  any  philosopher 
that  his  visions  are  true.  It  is  only  the  manner  of 
his  inspiration  that  causes  him  to  doubt  his  sanity. 
Not  merely  is  his  mind  vacant  when  the  spirit  of 
poetry  is  about  to  come  upon  him,  but  he  is  deprived 
of  his  judgment,  so  that  he  does  not  understand  his 
own  experiences  during  ecstasy.  The  idea  of  verbal 
inspiration,  which  used  to  be  so  popular  in  Biblical 

criticism,  has  been  applied  to  the  works  of  all  poets.^ 

*  See  Kathrina,  by  J.  G.  Holland,  where  the  heroine  main- 
tains that  the  inspiration  of  modern  poets  is  similar  to  that 
of  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  and  declares. 

As  for  the  old  seers 
Whose  eyes  God  touched  with  vision  of  the  life 
Of  the  unfolding  ages,  I  must  doubt 
Whether  they  comprehended  what  they  saw. 


The  Spark  from   Heaven  195 

Such  a  view  has  been  a  boon  to  Hterary  critics. 
Shakespeare  commentators,  in  particular,  have  been 
duly  grateful  for  the  lee- way  granted  them,  when 
they  are  relieved  from  the  necessity  of  limiting 
Shakespeare's  meanings  to  the  confines  of  his  knowl- 
edge. As  for  the  poet's  own  sense  of  his  incompre- 
hension, Francis  Thompson's  words  are  typical. 
Addressing  a  little  child,  he  wonders  at  the  state- 
ments she  makes,  ignorant  of  their  significance; 
then  he  reflects, 

And  ah,  we  poets,  I  misdoubt 

Are  little  more  than  thou. 

We  speak  a  lesson  taught,  we  know  not  how, 

And  what  it  is  that  from  us  flows 

The  hearer  better  than  the  utterer  knows.^ 

One  might  think  that  the  poet  would  take  pains  to 
differentiate  this  inspired  madness  from  the  diseased 
mind  of  the  ordinary  lunatic.  But  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  bards  who  were  literally  insane  have  attracted 
much  attention  from  their  brothers.-  Of  these, 
Tasso  ^  and  Cowper  *  have  appeared  most  often  in 
the  verse  of  the  last  century.  Cowper's  inclusion 
among  his  poems  of  verses  written  during  periods 
of  actual  insanity  has  seemed  to  indicate  that  poetic 

'  Sister  Songs. 

'At  the  beginning  of  the  romantic  period  not  only  Blake 
and  Cowper,  but  Christopher  Smart,  John  Clare,  Thomas 
Dermody,  John  Tannahill  and  Thomas  Lovell  Beddoes  made 
the  mad  poet   familiar. 

*  See  Song  for  Tasso,  Shelley;  Tasso  to  Leonora,  James 
Thomson,  B.  V.,  Tasso  to  Leonora.  E.  F.  Hoffman. 

*  See  Bowles,  The  Harp  and  Despair  of  Cowper;  Mrs. 
Browning,  Cowper's  Grave;  Lord  Houghton,  On  Cowper's 
Cottage  at  Olney. 


196  The  Poet's  Poet 

madness  is  not  merely  a  figure  of  speech.  There 
is  also  significance,  as  revealing  the  poet's  attitude 
toward  insanity,  in  the  fact  that  several  fictional 
poets  are  represented  as  insane.  Crabbe  and  Shelley 
have  ascribed  madness  to  their  poet-heroes,^  while 
the  American,  J.  G.  Holland,  represents  his  hero's 
genius  as  a  consequence,  in  part,  at  least,  of  a 
hereditary  strain  of  suicidal  insanity.^ 

It  goes  without  saying  that  this  is  a  romantic 
conception,  wholly  incompatible  with  the  eighteenth 
century  belief  that  poetry  is  produced  by  the  action 
of  the  intelligence,  aided  by  good  taste.  Think  of 
the  mad  poet,  William  Blake,  assuring  his  sedate 
contemporaries. 

All  pictures  that's  painted  with  sense  and  with  thought 
Are  painted  by  madmen  as  sure  as  a  groat.^ 

What  chance  did  he  have  of  recognition? 

This  is  merely  indicative  of  the  endless  quarrel 
between  the  inspired  poet  and  the  man  of  reason. 
The  eighteenth  century  contempt  for  poetic  madness 
finds  typical  expression  in  Pope's  satirical  lines, 

Some  demon  stole  my  pen  (forgive  the  offense) 
And  once  betrayed  me  into  common  sense.* 

And  it  is  answered  by  Burns'  characterization  of 
writers  depending  upon  dry  reason  alone : 

'  See  Crabbe,  The  Patron;  Shelley,  Rosalind  and  Helen. 

'  See  J.  G.  Holland,  Kathrina.  For  recent  verse  on  the 
mad  poet  see  William  Rose  Benet,  Mad  Blake;  Amy  Lowell, 
Clear,  With  Light  Variable  Winks;  Cale  Young  Rice,  The 
Mad  Philosopher;  Edmund  Blunden,  Clare's  Ghost. 

^See  fragment  CI. 

*  Dunciad. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  197 

A  set  o'  dull,  conceited  hashes 
Confuse  their  brains  in  college  classes ! 
They  gang  in  sticks  and  come  out  asses, 
Plain  truth  to  speak, 
And  syne  they  think  to  climb  Parnassus 
By  dint  of  Greek.^ 

The  feud  was  perhaps  at  its  bitterest  between  the 
eighteenth  century  classicists  and  such  poets  as 
Wordsworth  "  and  Burns,  but  it  is  by  no  means 
stilled  at  present.  Yeats  ^  and  Vachel  Lindsay  '* 
have  written  poetry  showing  the  persistence  of  the 
quarrel.  Though  the  acrimony  of  the  disputants 
varies,  accordingly  as  the  tone  of  the  poet  is  predomi- 
nantly thoughtful  or  emotional,  one  does  not  find 
any  poet  of  the  last  century  who  denies  the  supe- 
riority of  poetic  intuition  to  scholarship.  Thus 
Tennyson  warns  the  man  of  learning  that  he  can- 
not hope  to  fathom  the  depths  of  the  poet's  mind.'' 
So  Richard  Gilder  maintains  of  the  singer, 

He  was  too  wise 
Either  to  fear,  or  follow,  or  despise 
Whom  men  call  science — for  he  knew  full  well 
All  she  had  told,  or  still  might  live  to  tell 
Was  known  to  him  before  her  very  birth.^ 

The  foundation  of  the  poet's  superiority  is,  of  course, 
his   claim   that  his   inspiration   gives   him   mystical 

*  Epistle  to  Lapraik. 

*  See  the  Prelude. 

*  See  The  Scholar. 

*  See  The  Master  of  the  Dance.     The  hero  is  a  dunce  in 
school. 

*  See  The  Poet's  Mind. 

*  The  Poet's  Fame.    In  the  same  spirit  is  Invitation,  by  J.  E. 
Flecker. 


iqS  The  Poet's  Poet 

experience  of  the  things  which  the  scholar  can  only 
remotely  speculate  about.  Therefore  Percy  Mackaye 
makes  Sappho  vaunt  over  the  philosopher,  Pittacus : 

Yours  is  the  living  pall, 
The  aloof  and  frozen  place  of  listeners 
And  lookers-on  at  life.     But  mine — ah !  mine 
The  fount  of  life  itself,  the  burning  fount 
Pierian.     I  pity  you.^ 

Very  likely  Pittacus  had  no  answer  to  Sappho's 
boast,  but  when  the  average  nondescript  verse- 
writer  claims  that  his  intuitions  are  infinitely  superior 
to  the  results  of  scholarly  research,  the  man  of  rea- 
son is  not  apt  to  keep  still.  And  one  feels  that  the 
poet,  in  many  cases,  has  earned  such  a  retort  as  that 
recorded  by  Young: 

How  proud  the  poet's  billow  swells! 
The  God !  the  God !  his  boast : 
A  boast  how  vain !  what  wrecks  abound ! 
Dead  bards  stench  every  coast.^ 

There  could  be  no  more  telling  blow  against  the 
poet's  view  of  inspiration  than  this.  Even  so  pro- 
nounced a  romanticist  as  Mrs.  Browning  is  obliged 
to  admit  that  the  poet  cannot  always  trust  his  vision. 
She  muses  over  the  title  of  poet: 

The  name 
Is  royal,  and  to  sign  it  like  a  queen 
Is  what  I  dare  not — though  some  royal  blood 
Would  seem  to  tingle  in  me  now  and  then 

^  Sappho  and  Phaon,  a  drama. 
'^Resignation. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  199 

With  sense  of  power  and  ache, — with  imposthumes 

And  manias  usual  to  the  race.     Howbeit 

I  dare  not :  'tis  too  easy  to  go  mad 

And  ape  a  Bourbon  in  a  crown  of  straws; 

The  thing's  too  common.^ 

Has  the  poet,  then,  no  guarantee  for  the  genuine- 
ness of  his  inspiration?  Must  he  wait  as  ignorantly 
as  his  contemporaries  for  the  judgment  of  posterity? 
One  cannot  conceive  of  the  grandly  egoistic  poet  say- 
ing this.  Yet  the  enthusiast  must  not  believe  every 
spirit,  but  try  them  whether  they  be  of  God.  What 
is  his  proof? 

Emerson  suggests  a  test,  in  a  poem  by  that  name. 
He  avers, 

I  hung  my  verses  in  the  wind. 

Time  and  tide  their  faults  may  find. 

All    were   winnowed    through   and   through : 

Five  lines  lasted  sound  and  true; 

Five  were  smelted  in  a  pot 

Than  the  south  more  fierce  and  hot.^ 

The  last  lines  indicate,  do  they  not,  that  the  depth 
of  the  poet's  passion  during  inspiration  corresponds 
with  the  judgment  pronounced  by  time  upon  his 
verses?  William  Blake  quaintly  tells  us  that  he  was 
once  troubled  over  this  question  of  the  artist's  infal- 
libility, and  that  on  a  certain  occasion  when  he  was 
dining  with  the  prophet  Elijah,  he  inquired,  "Does 

^  Aurora  Leigh.     See  also  the  lines  in  the  same  poem, 

For  me,  I  wrote 

False   poems,    like   the    rest,    and    thought   them    true 

Because  myself  was  true  in  writing  them. 
'The  Test. 


200  The  Poet's  Poet 

a  firm  belief  that  a  thing  is  so  make  it  so?"  To 
which  EHjah  gave  the  comforting  reply,  "Every 
poet  is  convinced  that  it  does."  ^  To  the  cold  critic, 
such  an  answer  as  Emerson's  and  Blake's  is  doubt- 
less unsatisfactory,  but  to  the  poet,  as  to  the  religious 
enthusiast,  his  own  ecstasy  is  an  all-sufficient  evi- 
dence. 

The  thoroughgoing  romanticist  will  accept  no 
other  test.  The  critic  of  the  Johnsonian  tradition 
may  urge  him  to  gauge  the  worth  of  his  impulse 
by  its  seemliness  and  restraint,  but  the  romantic 
poet's  utter  surrender  to  a  power  from  on  high 
makes  unrestraint  seem  a  virtue  to  him.  So  with 
the  critic's  suggestion  that  the  words  coming  to  the 
poet  in  his  season  of  madness  be  made  to  square 
with  his  returning  reason.  Emerson  quotes,  and 
partially  accepts  the  dictum,  "Poetry  must  first  be 
good  sense,  though  it  is  something  more."  ^  But 
the  poet  is  more  apt  to  account  for  his  belief  in  his 
visions  by  Tertullian's  motto,  Credo  quod  absurdum. 

If  overwhelming  passion  is  an  absolute  test  of 
true  inspiration,  whence  arises  the  uncertainty  and 
confusion  in  the  poet's  own  mind,  concerning  matters 
poetical?  Why  is  a  writer  so  stupid  as  to  include 
one  hundred  pages  of  trash  in  the  same  volume  with 
his  one  inspired  poem?  The  answer  seems  to  be 
that  no  writer  is  guided  solely  by  inspiration.  Not 
that   he   ever  consciously    falsifies   or  modifies   the 

*  The  Marriage  of  Heaven  and  Hell,  "A  Memorable  Fancy." 
'  See  the  essay  on  Imagination. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  201 

revelation  given  him  in  his  moment  of  inspiration, 
but  the  revelation  is  ever  hauntingly  incomplete. 

The  slightest  adverse  influence  may  jar  upon  the 
harmony  between  the  poet's  soul  and  the  spirit  of 
poetry.  The  stories  of  Dante's  "certain  men  of 
business,"  who  interrupted  his  drawing  of  Beatrice, 
and  of  Coleridge's  visitors  who  broke  in  upon  the 
writing  of  Kiibla  Klmn,  are  notorious.  Tenny- 
son, in  The  Poet's  Mind,  warns  all  intruders  away 
from  the  singer's  inspired  hour.     He  tells  them, 

In  your  eye  there  is  death; 
There  is  frost  in  your  breath 
Which  would  blight  the  plants. 

In  the  heart  of  the  garden  the  merry  bird  chants ; 
It  would  fall  to  the  ground  if  you  came  in. 

But  it  is  not  fair  always  to  lay  the  shattering  of 
the  poet's  dream  to  an  intruder.  The  poet  himself 
cannot  account  for  its  departure,  so  delicate  and 
evanescent  is  it.     Emerson  says, 

There  are  open  hours 

When  the  God's  will  sallies  free, 

And  the  dull  idiot  might  see 

The  flowing  fortunes  of  a  thousand  years ; — 

Sudden,  at  unawares. 

Self-moved,  fly  to  the  doors, 

Nor  sword  of  angels  could  reveal 

What  they  conceal.^ 

What  is  the  poet,  thus  shut  out  of  Paradise,  to 

do?     He  can  only  make  a  frenzied  effort  to  record 
*  Merlin. 


202  The  Poet's  Poet 

his  vision  before  its  very  memory  has  faded  from 
him.  Benvenuto  Cellini  has  told  us  of  his  tantrums 
while  he  was  finishing  his  bronze  statue  of  Perseus. 
He  worked  with  such  fury,  he  declares,  that  his 
workmen  believed  him  to  be  no  man,  but  a  devil. 
But  the  poet,  no  less  than  the  molder  of  bronze,  is 
under  the  necessity  of  casting  his  work  into  shape 
before  the  metal  cools.  And  his  success  is  never 
complete.  Shelley  writes,  "When  composition 
begins,  inspiration  is  already  on  the  decline,  and 
the  most  glorious  poetry  that  has  ever  been  com- 
municated to  the  world  is  probably  a  feeble  shadow 
of  the  original  conceptions  of  the  poet."  ^ 

Hence  may  arise  the  pet  theory  of  certain  modern 
poets,  that  a  long  poem  is  an  impossibility.  Short 
swallow  flights  of  song  only  can  be  wholly  sincere, 
they  say,  for  their  ideal  is  a  poem  as  literally  spon- 
taneous as  Sordello's  song  of  Elys.  In  proportion 
as  work  is  labored,  it  is  felt  to  be  dead. 

There  is  no  lack  of  verse  suggesting  that  extempo- 
raneous composition  is  most  poetical,^  but  is  there 
nothing  to  be  said  on  the  other  side?  Let  us  reread 
Browning;'s  judgment  on  the  matter : 

Touch  him  ne'er  so  lightly,  into  song  he  broke. 

Soil  so  quick  receptive, — not  one   feather-seed. 

Not  one  flower-dust  fell  but  straight  its   fall  awoke 

*  The  Defense  of  Poetry. 

'  See  Scott's  accounts  of  his  minstrels'  composition.  See 
also,  Bayard  Taylor,  Ad  Atnicos,  and  Proem  Dedicatory;  Ed- 
ward Dowden,  The  Singer's  Plea;  Richard  Gilder,  How  to 
the  Singer  Comes  the  Song;  Joaquin  Miller,  Because  the 
Skies  are  Blue;  Emerson,  The  Poet;  Longfellow,  Envoi; 
Robert  Bridges,  A  Song  of  My  Heart. 


The  Spark  from   Heaven  203 

Vitalizing  virtue:  song  would  song  succeed 
Sudden  as  spontaneous — prove  a  poet  soul ! 

Indeed  ? 
Rock's  the  song  soil   rather,   surface  hard   and   bare: 
Sun  and  dew  their  mildness,  storm  and  frost  their  rage 
Vainly  both  expend, — few  flowers  awaken  there : 
Quiet  in  its  cleft  broods — what  the  after-age 
Knows  and  names  a  pine,  a  nation's  heritage.^ 

Is  it  possible  that  the  one  epic  poem  which  is  a 
man's  life  work  may  be  as  truly  inspired  as  is  the 
lyric  that  leaps  to  his  lips  with  a  sudden  gush  of 
emotion?  Or  is  it  true,  as  Shelley  seems  to  aver, 
that  such  a  poem  is  never  an  ideal  unity,  but  a  col- 
lection of  inspired  lines  and  phrases  connected  "by 
the  intertexture  of  conventional  phrases?"  ^ 

It  may  be  that  the  latter  view  seems  truer  to 
us  only  because  we  misunderstand  the  manner  in 
which  inspiration  is  limited.  Possibly  poets  bewail 
the  incompleteness  of  the  flash  which  is  revealed 
to  them,  not  because  they  failed  to  see  all  the  glories 
of  heaven  and  earth,  but  because  it  was  a  vision 
merely,  and  the  key  to  its  expression  in  words  was 
not  given  them.  "Passion  and  expression  are  beauty 
itself,"  says  William  Blake,  and  the  passion,  so  far 
from  making  expression  inevitable  and  spontaneous, 
may  by  its  intensity  be  an  actual  handicap,  putting 
the  poet  into  the  state  "of  some  fierce  thing  replete 
with  too  much  rage." 

^Epilogue  to  the  Dramatic  Idyls.  The  same  thought  is  in 
the  sonnet,  "I  ask  not  for  those  thoughts  that  sudden  leap," 
by  James  Russell  Lowell,  and  Overnight,  a  Rose,  by  Caroline 
Giltiman. 

*  The  Defense  of  Poetry. 


204  The  Poet's  Poet 

Surely  we  have  no  right  to  condemn  the  poet 
because  a  perfect  expression  of  his  thought  is  not 
immediately  forthcoming.  Like  any  other  artist, 
he  works  with  tools,  and  is  handicapped  by  their 
inadequacy.  According  to  Plato,  language  affords 
the  poet  a  more  flexible  implement  than  any  other 
artist  possesses,^  yet,  at  times,  it  appears  to  the 
maker  stubborn  enough.  To  quote  Francis  Thomp- 
son, 

Our  untempered  speech  descends — poor  heirs ! 
Grimy  and  rough-cast  still  from  Babel's  brick-layers; 
Curse  on  the  brutish  jargon  we  inherit, 
Strong  but  to  damn,  not  memorize  a  spirit !  ^ 

Walt  Whitman  voices  the  same  complaint : 

Speech   is   the   twin  of   my  vision:   it   is   unequal   to 

measure  itself ; 
It  provokes  me  forever ;  it  says  sarcastically, 
"Walt,  you  contain  enough,  why  don't  you  let  it  out 

then?"  3 

Accordingly  there   is  nothing  more  common   than 
verse  bewailing  the  singer's  inarticulateness.^ 

*  See  The  Republic,  IX,  588  D. 
'Her  Portrait. 

*  Song  of  Myself. 

*  See  Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  "For  words,  like  nature, 
half  reveal" ;  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  To  my  Readers;  Mrs. 
Browning,  The  Soul's  Expression;  Jean  Ingelow,  A  Lily  and 
a  Lute;  Coventry  Patmore,  Dead  Language ;  Swinburne,  The 
Lute  and  the  Lyre,  Plus  Intra;  Francis  Thompson,  Daphne; 
Joaquin  Miller,  Ina;  Richard  Gilder,  Art  and  Life;  Alice 
Meynell,  Singers  to  Come ;  Edward  Dowden,  Unuttered;  Max 
Ehrmann,  Tell  Me;  Alfred  Noyes,  The  Sculptor;  William 
Rose  Benet,  Thwarted  Utterance;  Robert  Silliman  Hillyer, 
Even  as  Love  Grows  More;  Daniel   Henderson,  Lover  and 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  205 

Frequently  these  confessions  of  the  impossibility 
of  expression  are  coupled  with  the  bitterest  tirades 
against  a  stupid  audience,  which  refuses  to  take 
the  poet's  genius  on  trust,  and  which  remains  utterly 
unmoved  by  his  avowals  that  he  has  much  to  say 
to  it  that  lies  too  deep  for  utterance.  Such  an  out- 
let for  the  poet's  very  natural  petulance  is  likely  to 
seem  absurd  enough  to  us.  It  is  surely  not  the  fault 
of  his  hearers,  we  are  inclined  to  tell  him  gently, 
that  he  suffers  an  impediment  in  his  speech.  Yet, 
after  all,  we  may  be  mistaken.  It  is  significant  that 
the  singers  who  are  most  aware  of  their  inarticulate- 
ness are  not  the  romanticists,  who,  supposedly,  took 
no  thought  for  a  possible  audience ;  but  they  are 
the  later  poets,  who  are  obsessed  with  the  idea  that 
they  have  a  message.  Emily  Dickinson,  herself  as 
untroubled  as  any  singer  about  her  public,  yet  puts 
the  problem  for  us.     She  avers, 

I  found  the  phrase  to  every  thought 

I  ever  had,  but  one ; 
And  that  defies  me, — as  a  hand 

Did  try  to  chalk  the  sun. 

To  races  nurtured  in  the  dark ; — 
How  would  your  own  begin? 

Can  blaze  be  done  in  cochineal, 
Or  noon  in  mazarin? 

"To  races  nurtured  in  the  dark."     There  lies  a 

prolific  source  to  the  poet's  difficulties.     His  task  is 

Lyre;  Dorothea  Lawrence  Mann,  To  Imagination;  John  Hall 
Wheelock,  Rossctti;  Sara  Teasdale,  The  Net;  Lawrence  Bin- 
yon,  //  /  Could  Sing  the  Song  of  Her. 


2o6  The  Poet's  Poet 

not  merely  to  ensure  the  permanence  of  his  own 
resplendent  vision,  but  to  interpret  it  to  men  who  take 
their  darkness  for  light.  As  Emerson  expresses  it 
in  his  translation  of  Zoroaster,  the  poet's  task  is 
"inscribing  things  unapparent  in  the  apparent  fabri- 
cation of  the  world."  ^ 

Here  is  the  point  where  poets  of  the  last  one 
hundred  years  have  most  often  joined  issues.  As 
writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  split  on  the  ques- 
tion whether  poetry  is  the  product  of  the  human 
reason,  or  of  a  divine  visitation,  literal  "inspiration," 
so  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  of  our  time 
have  been  divided  as  to  the  propriety  of  adapting 
one's  inspiration  to  the  limitations  of  one's  hearers. 
It  too  frequently  happens  that  the  poet  goes  to  one 
extreme  or  the  other.  He  may  either  despise  his 
audience  to  such  a  degree  that  he  does  not  attempt 
to  make  himself  intelligible,  or  he  may  quench  the 
spark  of  his  thought  in  the  effort  to  trim  his  verse 
into  a  shape  that  pleases  his  public. 

Austin  Dobson  takes  malicious  pleasure,  often,  in 
championing  the  less  aristocratic  side  of  the  con- 
troversy. His  Advice  to  a  Poet  follows,  through- 
out, the  tenor  of  the  first  stanza : 

My  counsel  to  the  budding  bard 
Is,  "Don't  be  long,"  and   "Don't  be  hard." 
Your  "gentle  public,"  my  good  friend, 
Won't  read  what  they  can't  comprehend. 

This  precipitates  us  at  once  into  the  marts  of  the 
money  changers,  and  one  shrinks  back  in  distaste. 
^  Essay  on  Imagination. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  207 

If  this  is  what  is  meant  by  keeping  one's  audience 
in  mind  during  composition,  the  true  poet  will  have 
none  of  it.  Poe's  account  of  his  deliberate  composi- 
tion of  the  Raven  is  enough  to  estrange  him  from 
the  poetic  brotherhood.  Yet  we  are  face  to  face 
with  an  issue  that  we,  as  the  "gentle  reader,"  can- 
not ignore.  Shall  the  poet,  then,  inshrine  his  visions 
as  William  Blake  did,  for  his  own  delight,  and  leave 
us  unenlightened  by  his  apocalypse? 

There  is  a  middle  ground,  and  most  poets  have 
taken  it.  For  in  the  intervals  of  his  inspiration 
the  poet  himself  becomes,  as  has  been  reiterated,  a 
mere  man,  and  except  for  the  memories  of  happier 
moments  that  abide  with  him,  he  is  as  dull  as  his 
reader.  So  when  he  labors  to  make  his  inspiration 
articulate  he  is  not  coldly  manipulating  his  materials, 
like  a  pedagogue  endeavoring  to  drive  home  a  lesson, 
but  for  his  own  future  delight  he  is  making  the  spirit 
of  beauty  incarnate.  And  he  will  spare  no  pains  to 
this  end.     Keats  cries, 

O  for  ten  years,  that  I  may  overwhelm 
Myself  in  poesy ;  so  I  may  do  the  deed 
My  soul  has  to  herself  decreed.^ 

Bryant  warns  the  poet, 

Deem  not  the  framing  of  a  deathless  lay 

The  pastime  of  a  drowsy  summer  day  ; 

But  gather  all  thy  powers 

And  wreak  them  on  the  verse  that  thou  dost  weave.^ 

*  Sleep    and   Poetry.     See    also    the    letter    to    his    brother 
George,  April,  181 7. 
^The  Poet. 


2o8  The  Poet's  Poet 

It  is  true  that  not  all  poets  agree  that  these  years 
of  labor  are  of  avail.  Even  Bryant,  just  quoted, 
v^-arns  the  poet, 

Touch  the  crude  line  with  fear 

But  in  the  moments  of  impassioned  thought.^ 

Indeed  the  singer's  awe  of  the  mysterious  revelation 
given  him  may  be  so  deep  that  he  dares  not  tamper 
with  his  first  impetuous  transcription  of  it.  But 
as  a  sculptor  toils  over  a  single  vein  till  it  is  perfect, 
the  poet  may  linger  over  a  word  or  phrase,  and  so 
long  as  the  pulse  seems  to  beat  beneath  his  fingers, 
no  one  has  a  right  to  accuse  him  of  artificiality. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  he  is  awkward,  and  when  he  tries 
to  wreathe  his  thoughts  together,  they  wither  like 
field  flowers  under  his  hot  touch.  Or,  in  his  zeal, 
he  may  fashion  for  his  forms  an  embroidered  robe 
of  such  richness  that  like  heavy  brocade  it  disguises 
the  form  which  it  should  express.  In  fact,  poets 
are  apt  to  have  an  affection,  not  merely  for  their 
inspiration,  but  for  the  words  that  clothe  it.  Keats 
confessed,  "I  look  upon  fine  phrases  as  a  lover." 
Tennyson  delighted  in  "jewels  fine  words  long,  that 
on  the  stretched  forefinger  of  all  time  sparkle  for- 
ever." Rossetti  spoke  no  less  sincerely  than  these 
others,  no  doubt,  even  though  he  did  not  illustrate 
the  efficacy  of  his  search,  when  he  described  his 
interest  in  reading  old  manuscripts  with  the  hope 
of  "pitching  on  some  stunning  words  for  poetry." 

Ever  and  anon  there  is  a  rebellion  against  con- 

'  The  Poet. 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  209 

scious  elaboration  in  dressing  one's  thoughts.  We 
are  just  emerging  from  one  of  the  noisiest  of  these. 
The  vers-librists  insist  that  all  adornment  and  dis- 
guise be  stripped  off,  and  the  idea  be  exhibited  in  its 
naked  simplicity.  The  quarrel  with  more  conserva- 
tive writers  comes,  not  from  any  disagreement  as 
to  the  beauty  of  ideas  in  the  nude,  but  from  a  doubt 
on  the  part  of  the  conservatives  as  to  whether  one 
can  capture  ideal  beauty  without  an  accurately  woven 
net  of  words.  Nor  do  the  vers-librists  prove  that 
they  are  less  concerned  with  form  than  are  other 
poets.  "The  poet  must  learn  his  trade  in  the  same 
manner,  and  with  the  same  painstaking  care,  as  the 
cabinet  maker,"  says  Amy  Lowell.^  The  disagree- 
ment among  poets  on  this  point  is  proving  itself  to 
be  not  so  great  as  some  had  supposed.  The  ideal  of 
most  singers,  did  they  possess  the  secret,  is  to  do  as 
Mrs.   Browning  advises  them, 

Keep  up  the  fire 
And  leave  the  generous  flames  to  shape  themselves.^ 

Whether  the  poet  toils  for  years  to  form  a  shrine 
for  his  thought,  or  whether  his  awe  forbids  him 
to  touch  his  first  unconscious  formulation  of  it,  there 
comes  a  time  when  all  that  he  can  do  has  been  done, 
and  he  realizes  that  he  will  never  approximate  his 
vision  more  closely  than  this.  Then,  indeed,  as 
high  as  was  his  rapture  during  the  moment  of  revela- 
tion, so  deep  is  likely  to  be  his  discouragement  with 

*  Preface  to  Szuord  Blades  attd  Poppy  Seed. 
^Aurora  Leigh. 


2IO  The  Poet's  Poet 

his  powers  of  creation,  for,  however  fair  he  may 
feel  his  poem  to  be,  it  yet  does  not  fill  the  place  of 
what  he  has  lost.  Thus  Francis  Thompson  sighs 
over  the  poet, 

When  the  embrace  has   failed,  the  rapture  fled, 

Not  he,  not  he,  the  wild  sweet  witch  is  dead. 

And  though  he  cherisheth 

The  babe  most  strangely  born  from  out  her  death, 

Some  tender  trick  of  her  it  hath,  maybe, 

It  is  not  she.^ 

We  have  called  the  poet  an  egotist,  and  surely,  his 
attitude  toward  the  blind  rout  who  have  had  no 
glimpse  of  the  heavenly  vision,  is  one  of  contemp- 
tuous superiority.  But  like  the  priest  in  the  temple, 
all  his  arrogance  vanishes  when  he  ceases  to  harangue 
the  congregation,  and  goes  into  the  secret  place  to 
worship.  And  toward  anyone  who  sincerely  seeks 
the  revelation,  no  matter  how  feeble  his  powers  may 
be,  the  poet's  attitude  is  one  of  tenderest  sympathy 
and  comradeship.     Alice  Cary  pleads. 

Hear  me  tell 
How  much  my  will  transcends  my  feeble  powers, 
As  one  with  blind  eyes  feeling  out  in  flowers 
Their  tender  hues.^ 

And  there  is  not  a  poet  in  the  last  century  of  such 
prominence  that  he  does  not  reverence  such  a  con- 
fession,^  and   aver  that  he   too  is  an   earnest   and 

^  Sister  Songs. 

'  To  the  Spirit  of  Song. 

*  Some  poems  showing  the  similarity  in  such  an  attitude  of 
great  and  small  alike,  follow :  Epistle  to  Charles  C.  Clarke, 
Keats ;  The  Soul's  Expression,  Mrs.  Browning ;  Memorial 
Verses  to  Wm.  B,  Scott,  Swinburne;  Sister  Songs,  Proemion 


The  Spark  from  Heaven  211 

humble  suppliant  in  the  temple  of  beauty.  For  the 
clearer  his  glimpse  of  the  transcendent  vision  has 
been,  the  more  conscious  he  is  of  his  blindness  after 
the  glory  has  passed,  and  the  more  unquenchable  is 
his  desire  for  a  new  and  fuller  revelation. 

to  Love  in  Dian's  Lap.  A  Judgment  in  Heaven,  Francis 
Thompson ;  Urania,  Matthew  Arnold ;  There  Have  Been  Vast 
Displays  of  Critic  Wit,  Alexander  Smith ;  Invita  Minerva  and 
L' Envoi  to  the  Muse,  J.  R.  Lowell;  The  Voiceless,  O.  W. 
Holmes ;  Fata  Morgana,  and  Epimetheus,  or  the  Poet's  After- 
thought, Longfellow;  L'Envoi,  Kipling;  The  Apology,  and 
Gleam  on  Me,  Fair  Ideal,  Lewis  Morris;  Dedication  to  Austin 
Dobson,  E.  Gosse;  A  Country  Nosegay,  and  Gleaners  of  Fame, 
Alfred  Austin;  Another  Tattered  Rhymster  in  the  Ring,  G. 
K.  Chesterton;  To  Any  Poet,  Alice  Meynell ;  The  Singer,  and 
To  a  Lady  on  Chiding  Me  For  Not  Writing,  Richard  Realf ; 
The  Will  and  the  Wing  and  Though  Dowered  ivith  Instincts 
Keen  and  High.  P.  H.  Haynes ;  Dull  Words,  Trumbull  Stick- 
ney;  The  Inner  Passion,  Alfred  Noyes ;  The  Veiled  Muse, 
William  Winter;  Sonnet,  William  Bennett;  Tell  Me,  Max 
Ehrmann  ;  The  Singer's  Plea.  Edward  Dowden ;  Genius,  R.  H. 
Home;  My  Country,  George  Woodberry;  Uncalled,  Madison 
Cawein;  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  At  the  Funeral  of  a  Minor 
Poet;  Robert  Haven  Schauffler,  Overtones,  The  Silent 
Singers;  Stephen  Vincent  Benet,  A  Minor  Poet;  Alec  de 
Candole,  The  Poets. 


THE  POET'S  MORALITY 

TF  English  poets  of  the  last  century  are  more 
inclined  to  parade  their  moral  virtue  than  are 
poets  of  other  countries,  this  may  be  the  result  of 
a  singular  persistency  on  the  part  of  England  in 
searching  out  and  punishing  sins  ascribed  to  poetic 
temperament.  Byron  was  banished;  Shelley  was 
judged  unfit  to  rear  his  own  children ;  Keats  was 
advertised  as  an  example  of  "extreme  moral 
depravity";^  Oscar  Wilde  was  imprisoned;  Swin- 
burne was  castigated  as  "an  unclean  fiery  imp  from 
the  pit."  ^  These  are  some  of  the  most  conspicuous 
examples  of  a  refusal  by  the  British  public  to  coun- 
tenance what  it  considers  a  code  of  morals  peculiar 
to  poets.  It  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that  verse- 
writers  of  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries 
have  not  been  inclined  to  quarrel  with  Sir  Philip 
Sidney's  statement  that  "England  is  the  stepmother 
of  poets,"  ^  and  that  through  their  writings  should 
run  a  vein  of  aggrieved  protest  against  an  unfair 
discrimination  in  dragging  their  failings  ruthlessly 
out  to  the  light. 

*  By  Blackwoods. 

'  By   The  Saturday  Review, 

'Apology  for  Poetry. 

212 


The  Poet's  Morality  213 

It  cannot,  however,  be  maintained  that  England 
is  unique  in  her  prejudice  against  poetic  morals. 
The  charges  against  the  artist  have  been  long  in 
existence,  and  have  been  formulated  and  reformu- 
lated in  many  countries.  In  fact  Greece,  rather 
than  England,  might  with  some  justice  be  regarded 
as  the  parent  of  the  poet's  maligners,  for  Plato  has 
been  largely  responsible  for  the  hue  and  cry  against 
the  poet  throughout  the  last  two  millennia.  Various 
as  are  the  counts  against  the  poet's  conduct,  they 
may  all  be  included  under  the  declaration  in  the 
Republic,  "Poetry  feeds  and  waters  the  passions 
instead  of  withering  and  starving  them ;  she  lets 
them  rule  instead  of  ruling  them."  ^ 

Though  the  accusers  of  the  poet  are  agreed  that 
the  predominance  of  passion  in  his  nature  is  the 
cause  of  his  depravity,  still  they  are  a  heterogeneous 
company,  suffering  the  most  violent  disagreement 
among  themselves  as  to  a  valid  reason  for  pronounc- 
ing his  passionate  impulses  criminal.  Their  unfor- 
tunate victim  is  beset  from  so  many  directions  that 
he  is  sorely  put  to  it  to  defend  himself  against  one 
band  of  assailants  without  exposing  himself  to  attack 
from  another  quarter. 

This  hostile  public  may  be  roughly  divided  into 
three  camps,  made  up.  respectively,  of  philistines, 
philosophers,  and  puritans.  Within  recent  years 
the  distinct  grievance  of  each  group  has  been  made 
articulate  in  a  formal  denunciation  of  the  artist's 
morals. 

*  Book  X,  606,  Jowett  translation. 


214  The  Poet's  Poet 

There  is,  first,  that  notorious  indictment,  Degen- 
eration, by  Max  Nordau.  Nordau  speaks  eloquently 
for  all  who  claim  the  name  "average  plain  citizen," 
all  who  would  hustle  off  to  the  gallows  anyone  found 
guilty  of  breaking  the  lockstep  imposed  upon  men 
by  convention.  Secondly,  there  is  a  severe  criticism 
of  the  poet  from  an  ostensibly  unbiased  point  of 
view,  The  Man  of  Genius,  by  Cesare  Lombroso. 
Herein  are  presented  the  arguments  of  the  thinkers, 
who  probe  the  poet's  foibles  with  an  impersonal  and 
scientific  curiosity.  Last,  there  is  the  severe  arraign- 
ment. What  Is  Art?  by  Tolstoi.  In  this  book  are 
crystallized  the  convictions  of  the  ascetics,  who  rec- 
ognize in  beauty  a  false  goddess,  luring  men  from 
the  stern  pursuit  of  holiness. 

How  does  it  come  about  that,  in  affirming  the  per- 
niciousness  of  the  poet's  passionate  temperament, 
the  man  of  the  street,  the  philosopher,  and  the  puri- 
tan are  for  the  nonce  in  agreement?  The  man  of 
the  street  is  not  averse  to  feeling,  as  a  rule,  even 
when  it  is  carried  to  egregious  lengths  of  sentimen- 
tality. A  stroll  through  a  village  when  all  the 
victrolas  are  in  operation  would  settle  this  point 
unequivocally  for  any  doubter.  It  seems  that  the 
Philistine's  quarrel  with  the  poet  arises  from  the 
fact  that,  unlike  the  makers  of  phonograph  records, 
the  poet  dares  to  follow  feeling  in  defiance  of  public 
sentiment.  Like  the  conservative  that  he  is,  the 
philistine  gloats  over  the  poet's  lapses  from  virtue 
because,  in  setting  aside  mass-feeling  as  a  gauge  of 
right  and  wrong,  and  in  setting  up,  instead,  his  own 


The  Poet's  Morality  215 

individual  feelings  as  a  rule  of  conduct,  the  poet 
displays  an  arrogance  that  deserves  a  fall.  The 
philosopher,  like  the  philistine,  may  tolerate  feeling 
within  limits.  His  sole  objection  to  the  poet  lies 
in  the  fact  that,  far  from  making  emotion  the  hand- 
maiden of  the  reason,  as  the  philosopher  would  do, 
the  poet  exalts  emotion  to  a  seat  above  the  reason, 
thus  making  feeling  the  supreme  arbiter  of  conduct. 
The  puritan,  of  course,  gives  vent  to  the  most  bitter 
hostility  of  all,  for,  unlike  the  philistine  and  the 
philosopher,  he  regards  natural  feeling  as  wholly 
corrupt.  Therefore  he  condemns  the  poet's  indul- 
gence of  his  passionate  nature  with  equal  severity 
whether  he  is  within  or  without  the  popular  confines 
of  proper  conduct,  or  whether  or  not  his  conduct 
may  be  proved  reasonable. 

Much  of  the  inconsistency  in  the  poet's  exhibi- 
tions of  his  moral  character  may  be  traced  to  the 
fact  that  he  is  addressing  now  one,  now  another,  of 
his  accusers.  The  sobriety  of  his  arguments  with 
the  philosopher  has  sometimes  been  interpreted  by 
the  man  of  the  street  as  cowardly  side-stepping.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  poet's  bravado  in  defying  the 
man  of  the  street  might  be  interpreted  by  the  philos- 
opher as  an  acknowledgment  of  imperviousness  to 
reason. 

It  seems  as  though  the  first  impulse  of  the  poet 
were  to  set  his  back  against  the  wall  and  deal  with 
all  his  antagonists  at  once,  by  challenging  their 
right  to  pry  into  his  private  conduct.  It  is  true 
that  certain  poets  of  the  last  century  have  believed 


2i6  The  Poet's  Poet 

it  beneath  their  dignity  to  pay  any  attention  to  the 
insults  and  persecution  of  the  pubHc.  But  though 
a  number  have  maintained  an  air  of  stoHd  indiffer- 
ence so  long  as  the  attacks  have  remained  personal, 
few  or  none  have  been  content  to  disregard  defama- 
tion of  a  departed  singer. 

The  public  cannot  maintain,  in  many  instances, 
that  this  vicarious  indignation  arises  from  a  sense 
of  sharing  the  frailties  of  the  dead  poet  who  is  the 
direct  object  of  attack.  Not  thus  may  one  account 
for  the  generous  heat  of  Whittier,  of  Richard  Watson 
Gilder,  of  Robert  Browning,  of  Tennyson,  in  rebuk- 
ing the  public  which  itches  to  make  a  posthumous 
investigation  of  a  singer's  character.^  Tennyson 
affords  a  most  interesting  example  of  sensitiveness 
with  nothing,  apparently,  to  conceal.  There  are 
many  anecdotes  of  his  morbid  shrinking  from  public 
curiosity,  wholly  in  key  with  his  cry  of  abhorrence, 

Now  the  poet  cannot  die 
Nor  leave  his  music  as  of  old, 
But  round  him  ere  he  scarce  be  cold 
Begins  the  scandal  and  the  cry : 
Proclaim  the  faults  he  would  not  show, 
Break  lock  and  seal ;  betray  the  trust ; 
Keep  nothing  sacred ;  'tis  but  just 
The  many-headed  beast  should  know. 

In  protesting  against  the  right  of  the  public  to 
judge  their  conduct,  true  poets  refuse  to  bring  them- 
selves to  a  level  with  their  accusers  by  making  the 

*  See  Whittier,  My  Namesake;  Richard  W.  Gilder,  A  Poet's 
Protest,  and  Desecration;  Robert  Browning,  House;  Tenny- 
son, In  Memoriam. 


The  Poet's  Morality  217 

easiest  retort,  that  they  are  made  of  exactly  the  same 
clay  as  is  the  hoi  polloi  that  assails  them.  This 
sort  of  recrimination  is  characteristic  of  a  certain 
blustering  type  of  claimant  for  the  title  of  poet,  such 
as  Joaquin  Miller,  a  rather  disorderly  American  of 
the  last  generation,  who  dismissed  attacks  upon  the 
singer  with  the  words, 

Yea,  he  hath  sinned.    Who  hath  revealed 
That  he  was  more  than  man  or  less  ?^ 

The  attitude  is  also  characteristic  of  another  anoma- 
lous type  which  flourished  in  America  fifty  years 
ago,  whose  verse  represents  an  attempted  fusion  of 
emasculated  poetry  and  philistine  piety.  A  writer 
of  this  type  moralizes  impartially  over  the  erring 
bard  and  his  accusers, 

Sin  met  thy  brother  everywhere, 
And  is  thy  brother  blamed? 
From   passion,  danger,   doubt  and   care 
He  no  exemption  claimed.^ 

But  genuine  poets  refuse  to  compromise  themselves 
by  admitting  that  they  are  no  better  than  other  men. 
They  are  not  averse,  however,  to  pointing  out  the 
unfitness  of  the  public  to  cast  the  first  stone.  So 
unimpeachable  a  citizen  as  Longfellow  finds  even 
in  the  notoriously  spotted  artist,  Benvenuto  Cellini, 
an  advantage  over  his  maligners  because 

He   is  not 
That  despicable  thing,  a  hypocrite.^ 

*  Burns  and  Byron. 

'  Ebenezer  Eliot,  Burns. 

'Michael  Angela. 


2i8  The  Poet's  Poet 

Most  of  the  faults  charged  to  them,  poets  aver, 
exist  solely  in  the  evil  minds  of  their  critics.  Cole- 
ridge goes  so  far  as  to  expurgate  the  poetry  of  Wil- 
liam Blake,  "not  for  the  want  of  innocence  in  the 
poem,  but  from  the  too  probable  want  of  it  in  the 
readers."  ^ 

The  nakedness  of  any  frailties  which  poets  may 
possess,  makes  it  the  more  contemptible,  they  feel, 
for  the  public  to  wrap  itself  in  the  cloak  of  hypocrisy 
before  casting  stones.  The  modern  poet's  weakness 
for  autobiographical  revelation  leaves  no  secret  cor- 
ners in  his  nature  in  which  surreptitious  vices  may 
lurk.  One  might  generalize  what  Keats  says  of 
Burns,  "We  can  see  horribly  clear  in  the  work  of 
such  a  man  his  whole  life,  as  if  we  were  God's 
spies."  -  The  Rousseau-like  nudity  of  the  poet's 
soul  is  sometimes  put  forward  as  a  plea  that  the 
public  should  close  its  eyes  to  possible  shortcomings. 
Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  precisely  in  the  lack 
of  privacy  characterizing  the  poet's  life  that  his 
enemies  find  their  justification  for  concerning  them- 
selves with  his  morality.  Since  by  flaunting  his 
personality  in  his  verse  he  propagates  his  faults 
among  his  admirers,  the  public  is  surely  justified  in 
pointing  out  and  denouncing  his  failings. 

Poets  cannot  logically  deny  this.  To  do  so,  they 
would  have  to  confess  that  their  inspirations  are 
wholly  unafifected  by  their  personalities.     But  this 

'  Letter  to  Charles  Augustus  Tulk,  Highgate,  Thursday 
Evening,  1818,  p.  684,  Vol.  II,  Letters,  ed.  E.  Hartley  Cole- 
ridge. 

'  Sidney  Colvin,  John  Keats,  p.  285. 


The  Poet's  Morality  219 

is,  naturally,  a  very  unpopular  line  of  defense.  That 
unhappy  worshiper  of  puritan  morals  and  of  the 
muses,  J.  G.  Holland,  does  make  such  a  contention, 
averring, 

God  finds  his  mighty  way 

Into  his  verse.    The  dimmest  window  panes 

Let  in  the  morning  light,  and  in  that  light 

Our  faces  shine  with  kindled  sense  of  God 

And  his  unwearied  goodness,   but  the  glass 

Gets  little  good  of  it ;  nay,  it  retains 

Its  chill  and  grime  beyond  the  power  of  Hght 

To  warm  or  whiten  .  .  . 

.  .  .  The  psalmist's  soul 

Was  not  a  fitting  place  for  psalms  like  his 

To  dwell  in  overlong,  while  wanting  words.^ 

But  the  egotism  of  the  average  poet  precludes  this 

explanation.    No  more  deadly  insult  could  be  offered 

him  than  forgiveness  of  his  sins  on  the  ground  of 

their   unimportance.      Far    from    holdjing   that   his 

personality  does  not  affect  his  verse,  he  would  have 

us  believe   that  the   sole   worth  of  his  poetry   lies 

in    its   reflection    of   his    unique   qualities    of    soul. 

Elizabeth  Barrett,  not  Holland,  exhibits  the  typical 

poetic  attitude  when  she  asks  Robert  Browning,  "Is 

it  true,  as  others  say,  that  the  productions  of  an 

artist  do  not  partake  of   his   real  nature, — that  in 

the  minor  sense,  man  is  not  made  in  the  image  of 

God?    It  is  not  true,  to  my  mind."  ^ 

The  glass  houses  in  which  the  poet's  accusers  may 

reside  really  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  question. 

*  Kathrina. 

'  Letter   to   Robert   Browning,   February  3,    1845. 


220  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  immorality  of  these  men  is  of  comparatively 
slight  significance,  whereas  the  importance  of  the 
poet's  personality  is  enormous,  because  it  takes  on 
immortality  through  his  works.  Not  his  contempo- 
raries alone,  but  readers  of  his  verse  yet  unborn  have 
a  right  to  call  him  to  account  for  his  faults.  Though 
Swinburne  muses  happily  over  the  sins  of  Villon, 

But  from  thy  feet  now  death  hath  washed  the  mire,^ 

it  is  difficult  to  see  how  he  could  seriously  have 
advanced  such  a  claim,  inasmuch  as,  assuming  Vil- 
lon's sincerity,  the  reader,  without  recourse  to  a 
biography,  may  reconstruct  the  whole  course  of  his 
moral  history  from  his  writings. 

Unquestionably  if  the  poet  wishes  to  satisfy  his 
enemies  as  to  the  ethical  worth  of  his  poetry,  he  is 
under  obligation  to  prove  to  them  that  as  "the  man 
of  feeling"  he  possesses  only  those  impulses  that 
lead  him  toward  righteousness.  And  though  puri- 
tans, philosophers  and  philistines  quarrel  over  tech- 
nical points  in  their  conceptions  of  virtue,  still,  if 
the  poet  is  not  a  criminal,  he  should  be  able,  by 
making  a  plain  statement  of  his  innocence,  to  remove 
the  most  heinous  charges  against  him,  which  bind 
his  enemies  into  a  coalition. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  poets,  as  a  class,  have 
acknowledged  the  obligation  of  proving  that  their 
lives  are  pure.  But  the  effectiveness  of  their  state- 
ments has  been  largely  dissipated  by  the  fact  that 
their  voices  have  been  almost  drowned  by  the  clamor 
^A  Ballad  of  Francois  Villon. 


The  Poet's  Morality  221 

of  a  small  coterie  which  finds  its  chief  delight  in 
brazenly  exaggerating  the  vices  popularly  ascribed 
to  it,  then  defending  them  as  the  poet's  exclusive 
privilege. 

So  perennially  does  this  group  flourish,  and  so 
shrill-voiced  are  its  members  in  self-advertisement, 
that  it  is  useless  for  other  poets  to  present  their 
case,  till  the  claims  of  the  ostentatiously  wicked  are 
heard.  One  is  inclined,  perhaps,  to  dismiss  them  as 
pseudo-poets,  whose  only  jchance  at  notoriety  is 
through  enunciating  paradoxes.  In  these  days  when 
the  school  has  shrunk  to  Ezra  Pound  and  his  fol- 
lowers, vaunting  their  superiority  to  the  public, 
"whose  virgin  stupidity  is  untemptable,"  ^  it  is  easy 
to  dismiss  the  men  and  their  verse  thus  lightly.  But 
what  is  one  to  say  when  one  encounters  the  decadent 
school  in  the  last  century,  flourishing  at  a  time  when, 
in  the  words  of  George  Augustus  Scala,  the  public 
had  to  choose  between  "the  clever  (but  I  cannot  say 
moral)  Mr.  Swinburne,  and  the  moral  (but  I  can- 
not say  clever)  Mr.  Tupper?"-  What  is  one  to 
say  of  a  period  wherein  the  figure  of  Byron,  with 
his  bravado  and  contempt  for  accepted  morality, 
towers  above  most  of  his  contemporaries? 

Whatever  its  justification,  the  excuse  for  the  poets 
flaunting  an  addiction  to  immorality  lies  in  the 
obnoxiousness  of  the  philistine  element  among  their 
enemies.  When  mass  feeling,  mass-morality, 
becomes  too  oppressive,  poets  are  wont  to  escape 

'  Ezra  Pound,  Tenzone. 

*  See  E,  Gosse,  Lije  of  Swinburne,  p.  162. 


222  The  Poet's  Poet 

from  its  trammelling  conventions  at  any  cost. 
Rather  than  consent  to  lay  their  emotions  under  the 
rubber-stamp  of  expediency,  they  are  likely  to  aver, 
with  the  sophists  of  old,  that  morality  is  for  slaves, 
whereas  the  rulers  among  men,  the  poets,  recognize 
no  law  but  natural  law. 

Swinburne  affords  an  excellent  example  of  this 
type  of  reaction.  Looking  back  tolerantly  upon  his 
early  prayers  to  the  pagan  ideal  to 

Come  down  and  redeem  us  from  virtue, 
upon  his  youthful  zest  in  leaving 

The  lilies  and  languors  of  virtue 
For  the  roses  and  raptures  of  vice, 

he  tried  to  dissect  his  motives.  "I  had,"  he  said,  "a 
touch  of  Byronic  ambition  to  be  thought  an  eminent 
and  terrible  enemy  to  the  decorous  life  and  respect- 
able fashion  of  the  world,  and,  as  in  Byron's  case, 
there  was  mingled  with  a  sincere  scorn  and  horror 
of  hypocrisy  a  boyish  and  voluble  affectation  of 
audacity  and  excess."  ^ 

So  far,  so  good.  There  is  little  cause  for  dis- 
agreement among  poets,  however  respectable  or  the 
reverse  their  own  lives  may  be,  in  the  contention  that 
the  first  step  toward  sincerity  of  artistic  expression 
must  be  the  casting  off  of  external  restraints.  Even 
the  most  conservative  of  them  is  not  likely  to  be 
seriously  concerned  if,  for  the  time  being,  he  finds 

*  E.  Gosse,  Life  of  Swinbttrne,  p.  309. 


The  Poet's  Morality  223 

among  the  younger  generation  a  certain  exaggera- 
tion of  the  pose  of  unrestraint.  The  respectability 
of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  did  not  prevent  his  com- 
placent musing  over  Tom  Moore  : 

If  on  his  cheek  unholy  blood 
Burned  for  one  youthful  hour, 

'Twas  but  the  flushing  of  the  bud 
That  bloomed  a  milk-white  flower.^ 

One  may  lay  it  down  as  an  axiom  among  poets  that 
their  ethical  natures  must  develop  spontaneously, 
or  not  at  all.  An  attempt  to  force  one's  moral 
instincts  will  inevitably  cramp  and  thwart  one's  art. 
It  is  unparalleled  to  find  so  great  a  poet  as  Coleridge 
plaintively  asserting,  "I  have  endeavored  to  feel 
what  I  ought  to  feel,"  -  and  his  brothers  have  recoiled 
from  his  words.  His  declaration  was,  of  course, 
not  equivalent  to  saying,  "I  have  endeavored  to  feel 
what  the  world  thinks  I  ought  to  feel,"  but  even 
so,  one  suspects  that  the  philosophical  part  of  Cole- 
ridge was  uppermost  at  the  time  of  this  utterance, 
and  that  his  obligatory  feelings  did  not  flower  in  a 
Christabel  or  a  Kubla  Khan. 

The  real  parting  of  the  ways  between  the  major 
and  minor  contingents  of  poets  comes  when  certain 
writers  maintain,  not  merely  their  freedom  from 
conventional  moral  standards,  but  a  perverse  inclina- 
tion to  seek  what  even  they  regard  as  evil.  This  is, 
presumably,  a  logical,  if  unconscious,  outgrowth  of 
the  romantic  conception  of  art  as  "strangeness  added 

^  After  a  Lecture  on  Moore. 

'Letter  to  the  Reverend  George  Coleridge,  March  21,  1J94. 


224  The  Poet's  Poet 

to  beauty."'  For  the  decadents  conceive  that  the 
loveliness  of  virtue  is  an  age-worn  theme  which  has 
grown  so  obvious  as  to  lose  its  aesthetic  appeal, 
whereas  the  manifold  variety  of  vice  contains  unex- 
plored possibilities  of  fresh,  exotic  beauty.  Hence 
there  has  been  on  their  part  an  ardent  pursuit  of 
hitherto  undreamed-of  sins,  whose  aura  of  sugges- 
tiveness  has  not  been  rubbed  off  by  previous  artistic 
expression. 

The  decadent's  excuse  for  his  vices  is  that  his 
office  is  to  reflect  life,  and  that  indulgence  of  the 
senses  quickens  his  apprehension  of  it.  He  is  apt  to 
represent  the  artist  as  "a.  martyr  for  all  mundane 
moods  to  tear,"  ^  and  to  indicate  that  he  is  unable  to 
see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole  until  he  has  expe- 
rienced the  whole  gamut  of  crime."  Such  a  view 
has  not,  of  course,  been  confined  to  the  nineteenth 
century.  A  characteristic  renaissance  attitude 
toward  life  and  art  was  caught  by  Browning  in  a 
passage  of  Sordello.  The  hero,  in  a  momentary 
reaction  from  idealism,  longs  for  the  keener  sen- 
sations arising  from  vice  and  exclaims. 

Leave  untried 
Virtue,  the  creaming  honey-wine ;  quick  squeeze 
Vice,  like  a  biting  serpent,  from  the  lees 
Of  life!     Together  let  wrath,  hatred,  lust, 
All  tyrannies  in  every  shape  be  thrust 
Upon  this  now. 

*  See  John  Davidson,  A  Ballad  in  Blank  Verse. 

'  See  Oscar  Wilde,  Ravenna;  John  Davidson,  A  Ballad  in 
Blank  Verse  on  the  Making  of  a  Poet,  A  Ballad  of  an 
Artist's  Wife;  Arthur  Symons,  There's  No  Lust  Like  to 
Poetry. 


The  Poet's  Morality  225 

Naturally  Browning  does  not  allow  this  thirst  for 
evil  to  be  more  than  a  passing  impulse  in  Sorclello's 
life. 

The  weakness  of  this  recipe  for  poetic  achieve- 
ment stands  revealed  in  the  cynicism  with  which 
expositions  of  the  frankly  immoral  poet  end.  If  the 
quest  of  wickedness  is  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the 
emotions,  it  is  a  very  short-lived  one.  The  blase 
note  is  so  dominant  in  Byron's  autobiographical 
poetry, — the  lyrics,  Childe  Harold  and  Don  Jiiun — 
as  to  render  quotation  tiresome.  It  sounds  no  less 
inevitably  in  the  decadent  verse  at  the  other  end  of 
the  century.  Ernest  Dowson's  Villanelle  of  the 
Poet's  Road  is  a  typical  expression  of  the  mood. 
Dowson's  biography  leaves  no  doubt  of  the  sin- 
cerity of  his  lines. 

Wine  and  women  and  song, 
Three  things  garnish  our  way: 
Yet  is  day  overlong. 
Three  things  render  us  strong. 
Vine-leaves,  kisses  and  bay. 
Yet  is  day  overlong. 

Since  the  decadents  themselves  must  admit  that 
delight  in  sin  kills,  rather  than  nurtures,  sensibility, 
a  popular  defense  of  their  practices  is  to  the  effect 
that  sin,  far  from  being  sought  consciously,  is  an 
inescapable  result  of  the  artist's  abandonment  to 
his  feelings.  Moreover  it  is  useful,  they  assert,  in 
stirring  up  remorse,  a  very  poetic  feeling,  because 
it  heightens  one's  sense  of  the  beauty  of  holiness. 
This  view  attained  to  considerable  popularity  during 


226  The  Poet's  Poet 

the  Victorian  period,  when  sentimental  piety  and 
worship  of  Byron  were  sorely  put  to  it  to  exist  side 
by  side.  The  prevalence  of  the  view  that  remorse 
is  the  most  reliable  poetic  stimulant  is  given  amusing 
evidence  in  the  Juvenalm  of  Tennyson  ^  and  Clough,^ 
wherein  these  youths  of  sixteen  and  seventeen,  whose 
later  lives  were  to  prove  so  innocuous,  represent 
themselves  as  racked  with  the  pangs  of  repentance 
for  mysteriously  awful  crimes.  Mrs.  Browning,  an 
excellent  recorder  of  Victorian  pviblic  opinion, 
ascribed  a  belief  in  the  deplorable  but  inevitable 
conjunction  of  crime  and  poetry  to  her  literary' 
friends,  Miss  Mitford  and  Mrs.  Jameson.  Their 
doctrine,  Mrs.  Browning  wrote,  "is  that  everything 
put  into  the  poetry  is  taken  out  of  the  man  and  lost 
utterly  by  him."  ^  Naturally,  Mrs.  Browning 
wholly  repudiated  the  idea,  and  Browning  concurred 
in  her  judgment.  "What  is  crime,"  he  asked, 
"which  would  have  been  prevented  but  for  the 
'genius'  involved  in  it? — Poor,  cowardly,  mis- 
created creatures  abound — if  you  could  throw  genius 
into  their  composition,  they  would  become  more 
degraded  still,  I  suppose."  ^ 

Burns  has  been  the  great  precedent  for  verse 
depicting  the  poet  as  yearning  for  holiness,  even 
while  his  importunate  passions  force  him  into  evil 
courses.    One  must  admit  that  in  the  verse  of  Burns 

*  See  Poems  of  Two  Brothers. 

*  See  An  Evening   Walk  in  Spring. 

*  See  letters  to  Robert  Browning,  February   17,   1846;  May 
I,    1846. 

*  Letter  to  Elizabeth  Barrett,  April  4,   1846. 


The  Poet's  Morality  227 

himself,  a  yearning  for  virtue  is  not  always  obvious, 
for  he  seems  at  times  to  take  an  unholy  delight  in 
contemplating  his  own  failings,  as  witness  the 
Epistle  to  Lapraik,  and  his  repentance  seems  merely 
perfunctory,   as   in   the   lines, 

There's  ae  wee  faut  they  whiles  lay  to  me, 
I  like  the  lassies — Gude  forgie  me. 

But  in  The  Vision  he  accounts  for  his  failings  as 
arising  from  his  artist's  temperament.  The  muse 
tells  him, 

I  saw  thy  pulses'  maddening  play, 

Wild,  send  thee  Pleasure's  devious  way, 

And  yet  the  light  that  led  astray 

Was  light  from  Heaven. 

And  in  A  Bard's  Epitaph  he  reveals  himself  as  the 
pathetic,  misguided  poet  who  has  been  a  favorite 
in  verse  ever  since  his  time. 

Sympathy  for  the  well-meaning  but  misguided 
singer  reached  its  height  about  twenty  years  ago, 
when  new  discoveries  about  Villon  threw  a  glamor 
over  the  poet  of  checkered  life.^  At  the  same  time 
Verlaine  and  Baudelaire  in  France,-  and  Lionel 
Johnson,  Francis  Thompson,  Ernest  Dowson,  and 
James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  in  England,  appeared  to 
prove  the  inseparability  of  genius  and  especial  temp- 
tation. At  this  time  Francis  Thompson,  in  his 
poetry,  presented  one  of  the  most  moving  cases  for 
the  poet  of  frail  morals,  and  concluded 

*  See  Edwin  Markham,  Villon;  Swinburne,  Burns,  A  Ballad 
of  Francois    Villon. 

'  See  Richard  Hovey,  Verlaine;  Swinburne,  Ave  atque 
Vale. 


228  The  Poet's  Poet 

What  expiating  agony 
May  for  him  damned  to  poesy 
Shut  in  that  Httle  sentence  be, — 
What  deep  austerities  of  strife,  — 
He  lived  his  life.     He  lived  his  life.^ 

Such  sympathetic  portrayal  of  the  erring  poet 
perhaps  hurts  his  case  more  than  does  the  bravado 
of  the  extreme  decadent  group.  Philistines,  puri- 
tans and  philosophers  alike  are  prone  to  turn  to  such 
expositions  as  the  one  just  quoted  and  point  out  that 
it  is  in  exact  accord  with  their  charge  against  the 
poet, — namely,  that  he  is  more  susceptible  to  temp- 
tation than  is  ordinary  humanity,  and  that  there- 
fore the  proper  course  for  true  sympathizers  would 
be,  not  to  excuse  his  frailties,  but  to  help  him  crush 
the  germs  of  poetry  out  of  his  nature.  "Genius  is 
a  disease  of  the  nerves,"  is  Lombroso's  formulation 
of  the  charge.-  Nordau  points  out  that  the  disease 
is  steadily  increasing  in  these  days  of  specializa- 
tion, and  that  the  overkeenness  of  the  poet's  senses 
in  one  particular  direction  throws  his  nature  out  of 
balance,  so  that  he  lacks  the  poise  to  withstand 
temptation. 

Fortunately,  it  is  a  comparatively  small  number 
of  poets  that  surrenders  to  the  enemy  by  conceding 
either  the  poet's  deliberate  indulgence  in  sin,  or  his 
pitiable  moral  frailty.  If  one  were  tempted  to  believe 
that  this  defensive  portrayal  of  the  sinful  poet  is  in 
any  sense  a  major  conception  in  English  poetry,  the 

'  A  Judgment  in  Heaven. 
^  The  Man  of  Genius. 


The  Poet's  Moraxity  229 

volley  of  repudiative  verse  greeting  every  outcrop- 
ping of  the  degenerate's  self-exposure  would  offer 
a  sufficient  disproof.  In  the  romantic  movement, 
for  instance,  one  finds  only  Byron  (among  persons 
of  importance)  to  uphold  the  theory  of  the  perverted 
artist,  whereas  a  chorus  of  contradiction  greets  each 
expression  of  his  theories. 

In  the  van  of  the  recoil  against  Byronic  morals 
one  finds  Crabbe,^  Prced  -  and  Landor."^  Later, 
when  the  wave  of  Byronic  influence  had  time  to 
reach  America,  Longfellow  took  up  the  cudgels 
against  the  evil  poet.'*  Protest  against  the  group 
of  decadents  who  flourished  in  the  1890's  even  yet 
rocks  the  poetic  waves  slightly,  though  these  men 
did  not  succeed  in  making  the  world  take  them  as 
seriously  as  it  did  Byron.  The  cue  of  most  present- 
day  writers  is  to  dismiss  the  professedly  wicked 
poet  lightly,  as  an  aspirant  to  the  laurel  who  is 
unworthy  of  serious  consideration.  A  contempo- 
rary poet  reflects  of  such  would-be  riders  of 
Pegasus : 

There  will  be  fools  that  in  the  name  of  art 
Will  wallow  in  the  mire,   crying,  "I   fall, 
I  fall  from  heaven !"  fools  that  have  only  heard 
From  earth,  the  murmur  of  those  golden  hooves 
Far,  far  above  them.^ 

*  See  Edmund  Shore,  Villars. 

*  See  l^he  Talented  Man,  To  Helen  with  Crabbe's  Poetry. 
'  See  few  Poets  Beckon,  Apology  for  Gcbir. 

*  See  his  treatment  of  Aretino,  in  Michael  Angelo. 
"Alfred  Noyes,  At  the  Sign  of  the  Golden  Shoe.     See  also 

Richard  Le  Gallienne,  The  Decadent  to  his  Soul,  Proem  to 
the  Reader  in  English  Poems;  Joyce  Kilmer,  A  Ballad  of 
New  Sins. 


230  The  Poet's  Poet 

Poets  who  indignantly  repudiate  any  and  all 
charges  against  their  moral  natures  have  not  been 
unanimous  in  following  the  same  line  of  defense. 
In  many  cases  their  argument  is  empirical,  and  their 
procedure  is  ideally  simple.  If  a  verse-writer  of 
the  present  time  is  convicted  of  wrong  living,  his 
title  of  poet  is  automatically  taken  away  from  him; 
if  a  singer  of  the  past  is  secure  in  his  laurels,  it  is 
understood  that  all  scandals  regarding  him  are  merely 
malicious  fictions.  In  the  eighteenth  century  this 
mode  of  passing  judgment  was  most  naively  mani- 
fest in  verse.  Vile  versifiers  were  invariably  accused 
of  having  vile  personal  lives,  whereas  the  poet  who 
basked  in  the  light  of  fame  was  conceded,  without 
investigation,  to  "exult  in  virtue's  pure  ethereal 
flame,"  In  the  nineteenth  century,  when  literary 
criticism  was  given  over  to  prose-writers,  those 
ostensible  friends  of  the  poets  held  by  the  same 
simple  formula,  as  witness  the  attempts  to  kill 
literary  and  moral  reputation  at  one  blow,  which 
were  made,  at  various  times,  by  Lockhart,  Chris- 
topher North  and  Robert  Buchanan.^ 

It  may  indicate  a  certain  weakness  in  this  hard 
and  fast  rule  that  considerable  difficulty  is  encoun- 
tered in  working  it  backward.  The  highest  virtue 
does  not  always  entail  a  supreme  poetic  gift,  though 
poets  and  their  friends  have  sometimes  implied  as 
much.  Southey,  in  his  critical  writings,  is  likely  to 
confuse   his   own  virtue   and   that   of  his   protege, 

*  Note  their  respective  attacks  on  Keats,  Swinburne  and  Ros- 
setti. 


The  Poet's  Morality  231 

Kirke  White,  with  poetical  excellence.  Longfel- 
low's, Whittier's,  Bryant's  strength  of  character 
has  frequently  been  represented  by  patriotic  Ameri- 
can critics  as  guaranteeing  the  quality  of  their 
poetical  wares. 

Since  a  claim  for  the  insunderability  of  virtue  and 
genius  seems  to  lead  one  to  unfortunate  conclusions, 
it  has  been  rashly  conceded  in  certain  quarters  that 
the  virtue  of  a  great  poet  may  have  no  immediate 
connection  with  his  poetic  gift.  It  is  conceived  by 
a  few  nervously  moral  poets  that  morality  and  art 
dw^ell  in  separate  spheres,  and  that  the  first  tran- 
scends the  second.  Tennyson  started  a  fashion  for 
viewing  the  two  excellences  as  distinct,  comparing 
them,  in  In  Memoriam: 

Loveliness  of  perfect  deeds, 
More  strong  than  all  poetic  thought, 

and  his  disciples  have  continued  to  speak  in  this 
strain.  This  is  the  tenor,  for  instance,  of  Jean 
Ingelow's  Letters  of  Life  and  Morning,  in  which 
she  exhorts  the  young  poet, 

Learn  to  sing, 
But  first  in  all  thy  learning,  learn  to  be. 

The  puritan  element  in  American  literary  circles, 
always  troubling  the  conscience  of  a  would-be  poet, 
makes  him  eager  to  protest  that  virtue,  not  poetry, 
holds  his  first  allegiance. 

He  held  his  manly  name 
Far  dearer  than  the   muse,^ 

^J.  G.  Saxe,  A  Poet's  Elegy. 


232  The  Poet's  Poet 

we  are  told  of  one  poet-hero.  The  good  Catholic 
verse  of  Father  Ryan  carries  a  warning  of  the  merely 
fortuitous  connection  between  poets'  talent  and  their 
respectability,  averring, 

They  are  like  angels,  but  some  angels  fell.^ 

Even  Whittier  is  not  sure  that  poetical  excellence  is 
worthy  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  as  virtue, 
and  he  writes, 

Dimmed  and  dwarfed,  in  times  like  these 
The  poet  seems  beside  the  man ; 
His  life  is  now  his  noblest  strain.^ 

When  the  poet  of  more  firmly  grounded  convic- 
tion attempts  to  show  reason  for  his  confidence  in 
the  poet's  virtue,  he  may  advance  such  an  argument 
for  the  association  of  righteousness  and  genius  as 
has  been  offered  by  Carlyle  in  his  essay.  The  Hero 
as  Poet.  This  is  the  theory  that,  far  from  being  an 
example  of  nervous  degeneration,  as  his  enemies 
assert,  the  poet  is  a  superman,  possessing  will  and 
moral  insight  in  as  preeminent  a  degree  as  he  pos- 
sesses sensibility.  This  view,  that  poetry  is  merely 
a  by-product  of  a  great  nature,  gains  plausibility 
from  certain  famous  artists  of  history,  whose  versa- 
tility appears  to  have  been  unlimited.  Longfellow 
has  seized  upon  this  conception  of  the  poet  in  his 
drama,  Michael  Angela,  as  has  G.  L.  Raymond  in 
his  drama,  Dante.  In  the  latter  poem  the  argument 
for  the  poet's  moral  supremacy  is  baldly  set  forth. 

*  Poets. 

'  To  Bryant  on  His  Birthday. 


The  Poet's  Morality  233 

Artistic  sensibility,  Dante  says,  far  from  excusing 
moral  laxity,  binds  one  to  stricter  standards  of  right 
living.  So  when  Cavalcanti  argues  in  favor  of  free 
love, 

Your  humming  birds  may  sip  the  sweet  they  need 
From  every  flower,  and  why  not  humming  poets  ? 

Raymond  makes  Dante  reply, 

The  poets  are  not  lesser  men,  but  greater. 

And  so  should  tind  unworthy  of  themselves 

A  word,  a  deed,  that  makes  them  seem  less  worthy. 

Owing  to  the  growth  of  specialization  in  modern 
life,  this  argument,  despite  Carlyle,  has  not  attained 
much  popularity.  Even  in  idealized  fictions  of  the 
poet,  it  is  not  often  maintained  that  he  is  equally 
proficient  in  every  line  of  activity.  Only  one  actual 
poet  within  our  period,  William  Morris,  can  be  taken 
as  representative  of  such  a  type,  and  he  does  not 
afford  a  strong  argument  for  the  poet's  distinctive 
virtue,  inasmuch  as  tradition  does  not  represent 
him  as  numbering  remarkable  saintliness  among 
his  numerous  gifts. 

There  is  a  decided  inconsistency,  moreover,  in 
claiming  unusual  strength  of  will  as  one  of  the 
poet's  attributes.  The  muscular  morality  resulting 
from  training  one's  will  develops  in  proportion  to 
one's  ability  to  overthrow  one's  own  unruly  impulses. 
It  is  almost  universally  maintained  by  poets,  on  the 
contrary,  that  their  gift  depends  upon  their  yielding 
themselves    utterly    to   every    fugitive   impulse   and 


234  The  Poet's  Poet 

emotion.  Little  modern  verse  vaunts  the  poet's  stern 
self-control.     George  Meredith  may  cry, 

I  take  the  hap 
Of  all  my  deeds.     The  wind  that  fills  my  sails 
Propels,  but  I  am  helmsman.^ 

Henley  may  thank  the  gods  for  his  unconquerable 
soul.  On  the  whole,  however,  a  fatalistic  temper 
is  much  easier  to  trace  in  modern  poetry  than  is 
this  one. 

Hardly  more  popular  than  the  superman  theory 
is  another  argument  for  the  poet's  virtue  that 
appears  sporadically  in  verse.  It  has  occurred  to  a 
few  poets  that  their  virtue  is  accounted  for  by  the 
high  subject-matter  of  their  work,  which  exercises 
an  unconscious  influence  upon  their  lives.  Thus 
in  the  eighteenth  century  Young  finds  it  natural  that 
in  Addison,  the  author  of  Cato, 

Virtues  by  departed  heroes  taught 
Raise  in  your  soul  a  pure  immortal  flame. 
Adorn  your  life,  and  consecrate  your  fame.^ 

Middle-class  didactic  poetry  of  the  Victorian  era 
expresses  the  same  view.  Tupper  is  sure  that  the 
true  poet  will  live 

With  pureness  in  youth  and  religion  in  age.^ 

since    he    conceives    as    the     function    of    poetry 

*  Modern  Love. 

'  Lines  to  Mr.  Addison. 

*  What  Is  a  Poet. 


The  Poet's  Morality  235 

To  raise  and  purify  the  grovelling  soul, 

•  •  •  • 

And  the  whole  man  with  lofty  thoughts  to  fill.^ 

This  explanation  may  account  for  the  piety  of  a 
Newman,  a  Keble,  a  Charles  Wesley,  but  how  can 
it  be  stretched  to  cover  the  average  poet  of  the 
last  century,  whose  subject-matter  is  so  largely  him- 
self? Conforming  his  conduct  to  the  theme  of  his 
verse  would  surely  be  no  more  efficacious  than 
attempting  to  lift  himself  by  his  own  boot  straps. 

These  two  occasional  arguments  leave  the  real 
issue  untouched.  The  real  ground  for  the  poet's 
faith  in  his  moral  intuitions  lies  in  his  subscription 
to  the  old  Platonic  doctrine  of  the  trinity, — the 
fundamental  identity  of  the  good,  the  true  and  the 
beautiful. 

There  is  something  in  the  nature  of  a  practical 
joke  in  the  facility  with  which  Plato's  bitter  ene- 
mies, the  poets,  have  fitted  to  themselves  his  superla- 
tive praise  of  the  philosopher's  virtue.-  The  moral 
instincts  of  the  philosopher  are  unerring,  Plato 
declares,  because  the  philosopher's  attention  is  riveted 
upon  the  unchanging  idea  of  the  good  which  under- 
lies the  confusing  phantasmagoria  of  the  temporal 
world.  The  poets  retort  that  the  moral  instincts  of 
the  poet,  more  truly  than  of  the  philosopher,  are 
unerring,  because  the  poet's  attention  is  fixed  upon 
the  good  in  its  most  ravishing  aspect,  that  of  beauty, 

"■Poetry. 

'  See  the  Republic,  VI,  485,  ff. 


236  The  Poet's  Poet 

and  in  this  guise  it  has  an  irresistible  charm  which 
it  cannot  hold  even  for  the  philosopher. 

Poets'  convictions  on  this  point  have  remained 
essentially  unchanged  throughout  the  history  of 
poetry.  Granted  that  there  has  been  a  strain  of 
deliberate  perversity  running  through  its  course, 
cropping  out  in  the  erotic  excesses  of  the  late-classic 
period,  springing  up  anew  in  one  phase  of  the 
Italian  renaissance,  transplanted  to  France  and  Eng- 
land, where  it  appeared  at  the  time  of  the  English 
restoration,  growing  again  in  France  at  the  time 
of  the  literary  revolution,  thence  spreading  across 
the  channel  into  England  again.  Yet  this  is  a  minor 
current.  The  only  serious  view  of  the  poet's  moral 
nature  is  that  nurtured  by  the  Platonism  of  every 
age.  Milton  gave  it  the  formulation  most  familiar 
to  English  ears,  but  Milton  by  no  means  originated 
it.  Not  only  from  his  Greek  studies,  but  from  his 
knowledge  of  contemporary  Italian  aesthetics,  he 
derived  the  idea  of  the  harmony  between  the  poet's 
life  and  his  creations  which  led  him  to  maintain 
that  it  is  the  poet's  privilege  to  make  of  his  own 
life  a  true  poem. 

"I  am  wont  day  and  night,"  says  Milton,  "to 
seek  for  this  idea  of  the  beautiful  through  all  the 
forms  and  faces  of  things  (for  many  are  the  shapes 
of  things  divine)  and  to  follow  it  leading  me  on  as 
with  certain  assured  traces."  ^  The  poet's  feeling 
cannot  possibly  lead  him  astray  when  his  sense  of 
beauty  affords  him  a  talisman  revealing  all  the 
^  Prose  works,  Vol.  I,  Letter  VII,  Symons  ed. 


The  Poet's  Morality  237 

ugliness  and  repulsiveness  of  evil.  Even  Byron 
had,  in  theory  at  least,  a  glimmering  sense  of  the 
anti-poetical  character  of  evil,  leading  him  to  cry, 

'Tis  not  in 
The  harmony  of  things — this  hard  decree, 
This  ineradicable  taint  of  sin, 
This  boundless  upas,  this  all-blasting  tree 
Whose  root  is  earth. ^ 

If  Byron  could  be  brought  to  confess  the  inhar- 
monious nature  of  evil,  it  is  obvious  that  to  most 
poets  the  beauty  of  goodness  has  been  undeniable. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  Collins  and  Hughes  wrote 
poems  wherein  they  elaborated  Milton's  argument 
for  the  unity  of  the  good  and  the  beautiful.-  Among 
the  romantic  poets,  the  Platonism  of  Coleridge,*'' 
Wordsworth,  Shelley  and  Keats  was  unflinching  in 
this  particular.  The  Brownings  subscribed  to  the 
doctrine.  Tennyson's  allegiance  to  scientific  natural- 
ism kept  him  in  doubt  for  a  time,  but  in  the  end 
his  faith  in  beauty  triumphed,  and  he  was  ready  to 
praise  the  poet  as  inevitably  possessing  a  nature 
exquisitely  attuned  to  goodness.  One  often  runs 
across  dogmatic  expression  of  the  doctrine  in  minor 
poetry.     W.  A.  Percy  advises  the  poet, 

O  singing  heart,  think  not  of  aught  save  song, 
Beauty  can  do  no  wrong.* 

'  Childe  Harold. 

'  Collins,  Ode  on  the  Poetical  Character;  John  Hughes, 
Ode  on  DiiHne  Poetry. 

'  See  his  essay  on  Claudian.  where  he  says,  "I  am  pleased 
to  think  that  when  a  mere  stripling  I  formed  the  opinion 
that  true  taste  was  virtue,  and  that  bad  writing  was  bad 
feeling." 

*  Song. 


238  The  Poet's  Poet 

Again  one  hears  of  the  singer, 

Pure  must  he  be ; 
Oh,  blessed  are  the  pure;  for  they  shall  hear 
Where  others  hear  not ;  see  where  others  see 
With  a  dazed  vision,^ 

and  again, 

To  write  a  poem,  a  man  should  be  as  pure 
As  frost-flowers.^ 

Only  recently  a  writer  has  pictured  the  poet  as  one 
who 

Lived  beyond  men,  and  so  stood 
Admitted  to  the  brotherhood 
Of  beauty.^ 

It  is  needless  to  run  through  the  list  of  poet  heroes. 
Practically  all  of  them  look  to  a  single  standard  to 
govern  them  aesthetically  and  morally.  They  are 
the  sort  of  men  whom  Watts-Dunton  praises, 

Whose  poems  are  their  lives,  whose  souls  within 
Hold  naught  in  dread  save  Art's  high  conscience  bar, 
Who  know  how  beauty  dies  at  touch  of  sin.* 

Such  is  the  poet's  case  for  himself.  But  no  matter 
how  eloquently  he  presents  his  case,  his  quarrel 
with  his  three  enemies  remains  almost  as  bitter  as 
before,  and  he  is  obliged  to  pay  some  attention  to 
their  individual  charges. 

*  Henry  Timrod,  A  Vision  of  Poesy. 

*  T.  L.  Harris,  Lyrics  of  the  Golden  Age. 

'  Madison  Cawein,  The  Dreamer  of  Dreams. 

*  The  Silent  Voices. 


The  Poet's  Morality  239 

The  poet's  quarrel  with  the  philistine,  in  particu- 
lar, is  far  from  settled.  The  more  lyrical  the  poet 
becomes  regarding  the  unity  of  the  good  and  the 
beautiful,  the  more  skeptical  becomes  the  plain 
man.  What  is  this  about  the  irresistible  charm  of 
virtue?  Virtue  has  possessed  the  plain  man's  joyless 
fidelity  for  years,  and  he  has  never  discovered  any 
charm  in  her.  The  poet  possesses  a  peculiar  power 
of  insight  which  reveals  in  goodness  hidden  beau- 
ties to  which  ordinary  humanity  is  blind?  Let  him 
prove  it,  then,  by  being  as  good  in  the  same  way  as 
ordinary  folk  are.  If  the  poet  professes  to  be  able 
to  achieve  righteousness  without  effort,  the  only 
way  to  prove  it  is  to  conform  his  conduct  to  that  of 
men  who  achieve  righteousness  with  groaning  of 
spirit.  It  is  too  easy  for  the  poet  to  justify  any 
and  every  aberration  with  the  announcement,  "My 
sixth  sense  for  virtue,  which  you  do  not  possess, 
has  revealed  to  me  the  propriety  of  such  conduct." 
Thus  reasons  the  philistine. 

The  beauty-blind  philistine  doubtless  has  some 
cause  for  bewilderment,  but  the  poet  takes  no  pains 
to  placate  him.  The  more  genuine  is  one's  impulse 
toward  goodness,  the  more  inevitably,  the  poet  says, 
will  it  bring  one  into  conflict  with  an  artificial  code 
of  morals.  Shelley  indicated  this  at  length  in  The 
Defense  of  Poetry,  and  in  both  Rosalind  and  Helen 
and  The  Revolt  of  Islam  he  showed  his  bards 
offending  the  world  by  their  original  conceptions  of 
purity.  Likewise  of  the  poet-hero  in  Prince  Athanase 
Shelley  tells  us, 


240  The  Poet's  Poet 

Fearless  he  was,  and  scorning  all  disguise. 

What  he  dared  do  or  think,  though  men  might  start, 

He  spoke  with  mild,  yet  unaverted  eyes. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  sometimes,  notably  in 
Victorian  narrative  verse,  the  fictitious  poet's  virtue 
is  inclined  to  lapse  into  a  typically  bourgeois  respect- 
ability. In  Mrs,  Browning's  Aurora  Leigh,  for 
instance,  the  heroine's  morality  becomes  somewhat 
rigid,  and  when  she  rebukes  the  unmarried  Marian 
for  bearing  a  child,  and  chides  Romney  for  speaking 
tenderly  to  her  after  his  supposed  marriage  with 
Lady  Waldemar,  the  reader  is  apt  to  sense  in  her 
a  most  unpoetical  resemblance  to  Mrs.  Grundy.  And 
if  Mrs.  Browning's  poet  is  almost  too  respectable, 
she  is  still  not  worthy  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same 
breath  with  the  utterly  innocuous  poet  set  forth  by 
another  Victorian,  Coventry  Patmore.  In  Patmore's 
poem,  Olympus,  the  bard  decides  to  spend  an  evening 
with  his  own  sex,  but  he  is  offended  by  the  cigar 
smoke  and  the  coarse  jests,  and  flees  home  to 

The  milk-soup  men  call  domestic  bliss. 

Likewise,  in  The  Angel  in  the  House,  the  poet  fol- 
lows a  most  domestic  line  of  orderly  living.  Only 
once,  in  the  long  poem,  does  he  fall  below  the  stand- 
ard of  conduct  he  sets  for  himself.  This  sin  consists 
of  pressing  his  sweetheart's  hand  in  the  dance,  and 
after  shamefacedly  confessing  it,  he  adds, 

And  ere  I  slept,  on  bended  knee 
I  owned  myself,  with  many  a  tear 
Unseasonable,  disorderly. 


The  Poet's  Morality  241 

But  so  distasteful,  to  the  average  poet,  is  such 
cringing  subservience  to  philistine  standards,  that 
he  takes  delight  in  swinging  to  the  other  extreme, 
and  representing  the  innocent  poet's  persecutions 
at  the  hands  of  an  unfriendly  world.  He  insists 
that  in  venturing  away  from  conventional  standards 
poets  merit  every  consideration,  being 

Tall  galleons, 
Out  of  their  very  beauty  driven  to  dare 
The   uncompassed   sea,   founder  in  starless  night.^ 

He  is  convinced  that  the  public,  far  from  sympathiz- 
ing with  such  courage,  deliberately  tries  to  drive  the 
poet  to  desperation.  Josephine  Preston  Peabody 
makes  Marlowe  inveigh  against  the  public, 

My  sins  they  learn  by  rote. 
And  never  miss  one;  no,  no  miser  of  them, 

•  •  •  • 

Avid  of  foulness,  so  they  hound  me  out 
Away  from  blessing  that  they  prate  about, 
But  never  saw,  and  never  dreamed  upon, 
And  know  not  how  to  long  for  with  desire.^ 

In  the  same  spirit  Richard  Le  Gallienne,  in  lines  On 
tJie  Morals  of  Poets,  warns  their  detractor. 

Bigot,  one  folly  of  the  man  you  flout 

Is  more  to  God  than  thy  lean  life  is  whole. 

If  it  be  true  that  the  poet  occasionally  commits 

an  error,  he  points  out  that  it  is  the  result  of  the 

^  At  the  Sign  of  the  Golden  Shoe,  Alfred  Noyes. 
'  Marlowe. 


242  The  Poet's  Poet 

Philistine's  corruption,  not  his  own.  He  acknowl- 
edges that  it  is  fatally  easy  to  lead  him,  not  astray 
perhaps,  but  into  gravely  compromising  himself, 
because  he  is  characterized  by  a  childlike  inability 
to  comprehend  the  very  existence  of  sin  in  the 
world.  Of  course  his  environment  has  a  good  deal 
to  do  with  this.  The  innocent  shepherd  poet,  shut 
off  from  crime  by  many  a  grassy  hill  and  purling 
stream,  has  a  long  tradition  behind  him.  The  most 
typical  pastoral  poet  of  our  period,  the  hero  of 
Beattie's  The  Minstrel,  suffers  a  rude  shock  when  an 
old  hermit  reveals  to  him  that  all  the  world  is  not 
as  fair  and  good  as  his  immediate  environment.  The 
innocence  of  Wordsworth,  and  of  the  young  Sor- 
dello,  were  fostered  by  like  circumstances.  Arnold 
conceives  of  Clough  in  this  way,  isolating  him  in 
Oxford  instead  of  Arcadia,  and  represents  him  as 
dying  from  the  shock  of  awakening  to  conditions 
as  they  are.  But  environment  alone  does  not  account 
for  a  large  per  cent  of  our  poet  heroes,  the  tragedy 
of  whose  lives  most  often  results  from  a  pathetic 
inability  to  recognize  evil  motives  when  they  are 
face  to  face  with  them. 

Insistence  upon  the  childlike  nature  of  the  poet 
is  a  characteristic  nineteenth  century  obsession. 
Such  temperamentally  diverse  poets  as  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing,^ Swinburne  ^  and  Francis  Thompson  ^  agree 
in  stressing  this  aspect  of  the  poet's  virtue.  Per- 
haps it  has  been  overdone,  and  the  resulting  picture 

^  See  A  Vision  of  Poets. 
*  See  A  New  Year's  Ode. 
'  See  Sister  Songs. 


The  Poet's  Morality  243 

of  the  singer  as  "an  ineffectual  angel,  beating  his 
bright  wings  in  the  void,"  is  not  so  noble  a  concep- 
tion as  was  Milton's  sterner  one,  but  it  lends  to 
the  poet-hero  a  pathos  that  has  had  much  to  do  with 
popularizing  the  type  in  literature,  causing  the  reader 
to  exclaim,  with  Shelley, 

The  curse  of  Cain 
Light  on  his  head  who  pierced  thy  innocent  breast 
And  scared  the  angel  soul  that  was  its  earthly  guest. 

Of  course  the  vogue  of  such  a  conception  owes 
most  to  Shelley.  All  the  poets  appearing  in  Shelley's 
verse,  the  heroes  of  Rosalind  and  Helen,  The  Revolt 
of  Islam,  Adonais,  Epipsychidion  and  Pritice 
AtJmnase,  share  the  disposition  of  the  last-named 
one: 

Naught  of  ill  his  heart  could  understand, 
•But  pity  and  wild  sorrow  for  the  same. 

It  is  obvious  that  all  these  singers  are  only  veiled 
expositions  of  Shelley's  own  character,  as  he  under- 
stood it,  and  all  enthusiastic  readers  of  Shelley's 
poetry  have  pictured  an  ideal  poet  who  is  reminiscent 
of  Shelley.  Even  a  poet  so  different  from  him,  in 
many  respects,  as  Browning,  could  not  escape  from 
the  impress  of  Shelley's  character  upon  his  ideal. 
Browning  seems  to  have  recognized  fleeting  glimpses 
of  Shelley  in  Sordello,  and  to  have  acknowledged 
them  in  his  apostrophe  to  Shelley  at  the  beginning 
of    that   poem.      Browning's    revulsion   of    feeling. 


244  The  Poet's  Poet 

after  he  discovered  Shelley's  abandonment  of  Har- 
riet, did  not  prevent  him  from  holding  to  his  early 
ideal  of  Shelley  as  the  typical  poet.  A  poem  by 
James  Thomson,  B.V.,  is  characteristic  of  later 
poets'  notion  of  Shelley.  The  scene  of  the  poem  is 
laid  in  heaven.  Shelley,  as  the  most  compassionate 
of  the  angels,  is  chosen  to  go  to  the  earth,  to  right 
its  evils.  He  comes  to  this  world  and  lives  with 
"the   saint's  white  purity,"  being 

A  voice  of  right  amidst  a  world's  foul  wrong, 

•  •  •  • 

With  heavenly  inspiration,  too  divine 

For  souls  besotted  with  earth's  sensual  wine.^ 

Consequently  he  is  misunderstood  and  persecuted, 
and  returns  to  heaven  heart-broken  by  the  apparent 
failure  of  his  mission. 

Aside  from  Shelley,  Marlowe  is  the  historical 
poet  most  frequently  chosen  to  illustrate  the  world's 
proneness  to  take  advantage  of  the  poet's  innocence. 
In  the  most  famous  of  the  poems  about  Marlowe, 
The  Death  of  Marlowe,  R.  H,  Home  takes  a  hopeful 
view  of  the  world's  depravity,  for  he  makes  Mar- 
lowe's innocence  of  evil  so  touching  that  it  moves 
a  prostitute  to  reform.  Other  poets,  however,  have 
painted  Marlowe's  associates  as  villains  of  far  deeper 
dye.  In  the  drama  by  Josephine  Preston  Peabody, 
the  persecutions  of  hypocritical  puritans  hound  Mar- 
lowe to  his  death. ^ 

The  most  representative  view  of  Marlowe  as  an 

^  Shelley. 
*  Marlowe. 


The  Poet's  Morality  245 

innocent,  deceived  youth  is  that  presented  by  Alfred 
Noyes,  in  ^^  the  Sign  of  the  Golden  Shoe.  In 
this  poem  we  find  Nash  describing  to  the  Mermaid 
group  the  tragic  end  of  Marlowe,  who  lies 

Dead  like  a  dog  in  a  drunken  brawl, 
Dead  for  a  phial  of  paint,  a  tafifeta  gown. 

While  there  float  in  from  the  street,  at  intervals, 
the  cries  of  the  ballad-mongers  hawking  their  latest 
doggerel, 

Blaspheming  Tamborlin  must  die, 

And  Faustus  meet  his  end ; 
Repent,  repent,  or  presently 

To  hell  you  must  descend, 

Nash  tells  his  story  of  the  country  lad  who  walked 
to  London,  bringing  his  possessions  carried  on  a 
stick  over  his  shoulder,  bringing  also, 

All  unshielded,  all  unarmed, 
A  child's  heart,  packed  with  splendid  hopes  and  dreams. 

His  manner. 

Untamed,  adventurous,  but  still  innocent, 

exposed  him  to  the  clutches  of  the  underworld.  One 
woman,  in  particular. 

Used  all  her  London  tricks 
To  coney-catch  the  country  greenhorn. 


246  The  Poet's  Poet 

Won  by  her  pathetic  account  of  her  virtues  and  trials, 
IMarlowe  tried  to  help  her  to  escape  from  London; 
then,  because  he  was  utterly  unused  to  the  wiles  of 
women,  and  was 

Simple  as  all  great,  elemental  things, 
when  she  expressed  an  infatuation  for  him,  then 

In  her  treacherous  eyes, 
As  in  dark  pools  the  mirrored  stars  will  gleam, 
Here  did  he  see  his  own  eternal  skies. 

And  all  that  God  had  meant  to  wake  one  day 

Under  the  Sun  of  Love,  suddenly  woke 

By  candle-light,  and  cried,  "The  Sun,  the  Sun." 

At  last,  holding  him  wrapped  in  her  hair,  the  woman 
attempted  to  tantalize  him  by  revealing  her  pro- 
miscuous amours.  In  a  horror  of  agony  and  loath- 
ing, Marlowe  broke  away  from  her.  The  next  day, 
as  Nash  was  loitering  in  a  group  including  this 
woman  and  her  lover.  Archer,  someone  ran  in  to 
warn  Archer  that  a  man  was  on  his  way  to  kill  him. 
As  Marlowe  strode  into  the  place,  Nash  was  struck 
afresh  by  his  beauty: 

I  saw  his  face. 
Pale,  innocent,  just  the  clear  face  of  that  boy 
Who  walked  to  Cambridge,  with  a  bundle  and  stick. 
The  little  cobbler's  son.     Yet — there  I  caught 
My  only  glimpse  of  how  the  sun-god  looked — 

Mourning  for  his  death,  the  great  dramatists  agree 
that 


The  Poet's  Morality  247 

His  were,  perchance,  the  noblest  steeds  of  all, 
And  from  their  nostrils  blew  a  fierier  dawn 
Above  the  world.  .  .  .  Before  his  hand 
Had  learned  to  quell  them,  he  was  dashed  to  earth. 

Minor  writers  are  most  impartial  in  clearing  the 
names  of  any  and  all  historical  artists  by  such 
reasoning  as  this.  By  negligible  American  versifiers 
one  too  often  finds  Burns  lauded  as  one  whom  "such 
purity  inspires,"  ^  and,  more  astonishingly,  Byron 
conceived  of  as  a  misjudged  innocent.  If  one  is 
surprised  to  hear,  in  verse  on  Byron's  death, 

His  cherub  soul  has  passed  to  its  eclipse,^ 

this  fades  into  insignificance  beside  the  consolation 
offered  Byron  by  another  writer  for  his  trials  in 
this  world, 

Peace  awaits  thee  with  caressings, 
Sitting  at  the  feet  of  Jesus. 

Better  known  poets  are  likely  to  admit  a  streak 
of  imperfection  in  a  few  of  their  number,  while 
maintaining  their  essential  goodness.  It  is  refresh- 
ing, after  witnessing  too  much  whitewashing  of 
Burns,  to  find  James  Russell  Lowell  bringing  Burns 
down  to  a  level  where  the  attacks  of  philistines, 
though  unwarranted,  are  not  sacrilegious.  Lowell 
imagines  Holy  Willie  trying  to  shut  Burns  out  of 
heaven.     He  accuses  Burns  first  of  irreligion,  but 

*  A.  S.  G.,  Buni^. 

*T.  H.  Chivers,  On  the  Death  of  Byron. 


248  The  Poet's  Poet 

St.  Paul  protests  against  his  exclusion  on  that 
ground.  At  the  charges  of  drunkenness,  and  of 
yearning  "o'er-warmly  toward  the  lasses,"  Noah 
and  David  come  severally  to  his  defense.  In  the 
end,  Burns'  great  charity  is  felt  to  offset  all  his  fail- 
ings, and  Lowell  adds,  of  poets  in  general, 

These  larger  hearts  must  feel  the  rolls 
Of  stormier- waved  temptation  ; 
These  star-wide  souls  beneath  their  poles 
Bear  zones  of  tropic  passion.^ 

Browning  is  willing  to  allow  even  fictitious  artists 
to  be  driven  into  imperfect  conduct  by  the  failure 
of  those  about  them  to  live  up  to  their  standards. 
For  example,  Fra  Lippo  Lippi,  disgusted  with  the 
barren  virtue  of  the  monks,  confesses, 

I  do  these  wild  things  in  sheer  despite 
And  play  the  fooleries  you  catch  me  at 
In  sheer  rage. 

But  invariably,  whatever  a  poet  hero's  failings  may 
be,  the  author  assures  the  philistine  public  that  it 
is  entirely  to  blame. 

If  the  poet  is  unable  to  find  common  ground  with 
the  plain  man  on  which  he  can  make  his  morality 
sympathetically  understood,  his  quarrel  with  the 
puritan  is  foredoomed  to  unsuccessful  issue,  for 
whereas  the  plain  man  will  wink  at  a  certain  type  of 
indulgence,  the  puritan  will  be  satisfied  with  noth- 

^  At  the  Burns  Centennial. 


The  Poet's  Morality  249 

ing  but  iron  restraint  on  the  poet's  part,  and  sys- 
tematic thwarting  of  the  impulses  which  are  the 
breath  of  Hfe  to  him. 

The  poet's  only  hope  of  winning  in  his  argument 
with  the  puritan  lies  in  the  possibility  that  the  race 
of  puritans  is  destined  for  extinction.  Certainly 
they  were  much  more  numerous  fifty  years  ago 
than  now,  and  consequently  more  voluble  in  their 
denunciation  of  the  poet.  At  that  time  they  found 
their  most  redoubtable  antagonists  in  the  Brown- 
ings. Robert  Browning  devoted  a  poem,  With 
Francis  Furini,  to  exposing  the  incompatibility  of 
asceticism  and  art,  while  Mrs.  Browning,  in  The 
Poet's  Vow,  worked  out  the  tragic  consequences  of 
the  hero's  mistaken  determination  to  retire  from 
the  world, 

That  so  my  purged,  once  human  heart. 

From  all  the  human  rent. 

May  gather  strength  to  pledge  and  drink 

Your  wine  of  wonderment, 

While  you  pardon  me  all  blessingly 

The  woe  mine  Adam  sent. 

In  the  end  Mrs.  Browning  makes  her  poet  realize 
that  he  is  crushing  the  best  part  of  his  nature  by 
thus  thwarting  his  human  instincts. 

No,  the  poet's  virtue  must  not  be  a  pruning  of 
his  human  nature,  but  a  flowering  of  it.  Nowhere 
are  the  Brownings  more  in  sympathy  than  in  their 
recognition  of  this  fact.  In  Pauline,  Browning 
traces  the  poet's  mistaken  effort  to  find  goodness  in 


250  The  Poet's  Poet 

self-restraint  and  denial.  It  is  a  failure,  and  the 
poem  ends  with  the  hero's  recognition  that  "life  is 
truth,  and  truth  is  good."  The  same  idea  is  one  of 
the  leading  motives  in  SordeUo. 

One  seems  to  be  coming  perilously  near  the  de- 
cadent poet's  argument  again.  And  there  remains 
to  be  dealt  with  a  poet  more  extreme  than  Brown- 
ing— Walt  Whitman,  who  challenges  us  with  his 
slogan,  "Clear  and  sweet  is  my  soul,  and  clear  and 
sweet  is  all  that  is  not  my  soul,"  ^  and  then  records 
his  zest  in  throwing  himself  into  all  phases  of  life. 

It  is  plain,  at  any  rate,  how  the  abandon  of  the 
decadent  might  develop  from  the  poet's  insistence 
upon  his  need  to  follow  impulse  utterly,  to  develop 
himself  in  all  directions.  The  cry  of  Browning's 
poet  in  Pauline, 

I  had  resolved 
No  age  should  come  on  me  ere  youth  was  spent, 
For  I  would  wear  myself  out, 

Omar  Khayyam's 

While  you  live 
Drink ! — for   once   dead  you   never   shall   return, 

Swinburne's  cry  of  despair, 

Thou  has  conquered,  O  pale  Galilean ;  the  world  has 

grown  gray  with  thy  breath  ; 
We  have  drunken  of  things  Lethean,  and  fed  on  the 

fullness  of   death,^ 

^Song   of  Myself. 
*  Hymn  to  Proserpine. 


The  Poet's  Morality  251 

show  that  in  a  revulsion  from  the  asceticism  of  the 
puritan,  no  less  than  in  a  revulsion  from  the  stupid- 
ity of  the  plain  man,  it  may  become  easy  for  the 
poet  to  carry  his  carpe  diem  philosophy  very  far. 
His  talisman,  pure  love  of  beauty,  must  be  indeed 
unerring  if  it  is  to  guide  aright  his 

principle  of  restlessness 
That  would  be  all,  have,  see,  know,  taste,  feel,  all.^ 

The  puritan  sees,  with  grim  pleasure,  that  an  oc- 
casional poet  confesses  that  his  sense  of  beauty  is 
not  strong  enough  to  lead  him  at  all  times.  Emer- 
son admits  this,  telling  us,  in  The  Poet,  that  al- 
though the  singer  perceives  ideals  in  his  moments 
of  afflatus  which 

Turn  his  heart  from  lovely  maids. 
And  make  the  darlings  of  the  earth 
Swainish,  coarse,  and  nothing  worth, 

these  moments  of  exaltation  pass,  and  the  singer 
finds  himself  a  mere  man,  with  an  unusually  rich 
sensuous  nature, 

Eager  for  good,  not  hating  ill  ; 

On  his  tense  chords  all  strokes  are  felt. 

The  good,  the  bad,  with  equal  zeal. 

It  is  not  unheard-of  to  find  a  poet  who,  despite 
occasional  expressions  of  confidence  in  the  power 
of  beauty  to  sustain  him,  loses  his  courage  at  other 
times,   and   lays   down   a   system   of   rules    for   his 

*  Pauline. 


252  The  Poet's  Poet 

guidance  that  is  quite  as  strict  as  any  which  puritans 
could  formulate.  Wordsworth's  Ode  to  Duty  does 
not  altogether  embody  the  aesthetic  conception  of 
effortless  right  living.  One  may,  perhaps,  explain 
this  poem  on  the  grounds  that  Wordsworth  is  laying 
down  principles  of  conduct,  not  for  poets,  but  for 
the  world  at  large,  which  is  blind  to  aesthetic  prin- 
ciples. Not  thus,  however,  may  one  account  for  the 
self-tortures  of  Arthur  Clough,  or  of  Christina 
Rossetti,  who  was  fully  aware  of  the  disagreeable- 
ness  of  the  standards  which  she  set  up  for  herself. 
She  reflected  grimly, 

Does  the  road  wind  uphill  all  the  way? 

Yes,  to  the  very  end ! 
Will  the  day's  journey  take  the  whole  long  day? 

From  morn  till  night,  my  friend.^ 

It  cannot  be  accidental,  however,  that  wherever 
a  poet  voices  a  stern  conception  of  virtue,  he  is  a 
poet  whose  sensibility  to  physical  beauty  is  not  note- 
worthy. This  is  obviously  true  in  the  case  of  both 
Clough  and  Christina  Rossetti.  At  intervals  it  was 
true  of  Wordsworth,  whereas  in  the  periods  of  his 
inspiration  he  expressed  his  belief  that  goodness 
is  as  a  matter  of  good  taste.  The  pleasures  of  the 
imagination  were  then  so  intense  that  they  destroyed 
in  him  all  desire  for  dubious  delights.  Thus  in  the 
Prelude  he  described  an  unconscious  purification  of 
his  life  by  his  worship  of  physical  beauty,  saying 
of  nature, 
*  Uphill 


The  Poet's  Morality  253 

If  in  my  youth  I  have  been  pure  in  heart, 
If,  mingling  with  the  world,  I  am  content 
With  my  own  modest  pleasures,  and  have  lived 
With  God  and  Nature  communing,  removed 
From  little  enmities  and  low  desires. 
The  gift  is  yours. 

Dante  Gabriel,  not  Christina,  possessed  the  most 
purely  poetical  nature  in  the  Rossetti  family,  and 
his  moral  conceptions  were  the  typical  aesthetic  ones, 
as  incomprehensible  to  the  puritan  as  they  were  to 
Ruskin,  who  exclaimed,  "I  don't  say  you  do  wrong, 
because  you  don't  seem  to  know  what  is  wrong,  but 
you  do  just  whatever  you  like  as  far  as  possible — 
as  puppies  and  tomtits  do."  ^  To  poets  themselves 
however,  there  appears  nothing  incomprehensible 
about  the  inevitable  rightness  of  their  conduct,  for 
they  have  not  passed  out  of  the  happy  stage  of 
Wordsworth's  Ode  to  Duty, 

When  love  is  an  unerring  light, 
And  joy  its  own  felicity. 

For  the  most  part,  whenever  the  puritan  imagines 
that  the  poet  has  capitulated,  he  is  mistaken,  and 
the  apparent  self-denial  in  the  poet's  life  is  really 
an  exquisite  sort  of  epicureanism.  The  likelihood 
of  ^ch  misunderstanding  by  the  world  is  indicated 
by  Browning  in  Sordello,  wherein  the  hero  refuses 
to  taste  the  ordinary  pleasures  of  life,  because  he 
wishes  to  enjoy  the  flavor  of  the  highest  pleasure 
untainted.     He  resolves, 

*  See  E.  L.  Cary,  The  Rossettis,  p.  79. 


254  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  world  shall  bow  to  me  conceiving  all 

IMan's  life,  who  see  its  blisses,  great  and  small 

Afar — not  tasting  any;  no  machine 

To  exercise  my  utmost  will  is  mine, 

Be  mine  mere  consciousness :  Let  men  perceive 

What  I  could  do,  a  mastery  believe 

Asserted  and  established  to  the  throng 

By  their   selected   evidence   of   song, 

Which  now  shall  prove,  whate'er  they  are,  or  seek 

To  be,  I  am. 

The  claims  of  the  puritans  being  set  aside,  the 
poet  must,  finally,  meet  the  objection  of  his  third 
disputant,  the  philosopher,  the  one  accuser  whose 
charges  the  poet  is  wont  to  treat  with  respect.  What 
validity,  the  philosopher  asks,  can  be  claimed  for 
apprehension  of  truth,  of  the  good-beautiful,  se- 
cured not  through  the  intellect,  but  through  emo- 
tion? What  proof  has  the  poet  that  feeling  is  as 
unerring  in  detecting  the  essential  nature  of  the 
highest  good  as  is  the  reason? 

There  is  great  variance  in  the  breach  between 
philosophers  and  poets  on  this  point.  Between  the 
philosopher  of  purely  rationalistic  temper,  and  the 
poet  who 

dares  to  take 
Life's  rule  from  passion  craved  for  passion's  sake,^ 

there  is  absolutely  no  common  ground,  of  course. 
Such  a  poet  finds  the  rigid  ethical  system  of  a  ra- 
tionalistic philosophy  as  uncharacteristic  of  the  ac- 
^  Said  of  Byron.    Wordsworth,  Not  in  the  Lucid  Inten>als. 


The  Poet's  Morality  255 

tual  fluidity  of  the  world  as  ever  Cratylus  did.  Feel- 
ing, but  not  reason,  may  be  swift  enough  in  its 
transformations  to  mirror  the  world,  such  a  poet 
believes,  and  he  imitates  the  actual  flux  of  things, 
not  with  a  wagging  of  the  thumb,  like  Cratylus, 
but  with  a  flutter  of  the  heart.  Thus  one  finds 
Byron  characteristically  asserting,  "I  hold  virtue, 
in  general,  or  the  virtues  generally,  to  be  only  in 
the  disposition,  each  a  feeling,  not  a  principle."  ^ 
On  the  other  hand,  one  occasionally  meets  a  point 
of  view  as  opposite  as  that  of  Poe,  who  believed 
that  the  poet,  no  less  than  the  philosopher,  is  gov- 
erned by  reason  solely, — that  the  poetic  imagination 
is  a  purely  intellectual  function.-  The  philosopher 
could  have  no  quarrel  with  him.  Between  the  two 
extremes  are  the  more  thoughtful  of  the  Victorian 
poets, — Browning,  Tennyson,  Arnold,  Clough, 
whose  taste  leads  them  so  largely  to  intellectual 
pursuits  that  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  their  prin- 
ciples of  moral  conduct  arise  from  the  poetical  or 
the  philosophical  part  of  their  natures. 

The  most  profound  utterances  of  poets  on  this 
subject,  however,  show  them  to  be,  not  rationalists, 
but  thoroughgoing  Platonists.  The  feeling  in  which 
they  trust  is  a  Platonic  intuition  which  includes  the 
reason,  but  exists  above  it.  At  least  this  is  the 
view  of  Shelley,  and  Shelley  has,  more  largely  than 
any  other  man,  moulded  the  beliefs  of  later  English 
poets.     It  is  because  he  judges  imaginative  feeling 

^Letter  to  Charles  Dallas,  January  21,   1808. 

'  See  the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  II,  328,  April,  1836. 


256  The  Poet's  Poet 

to  be  always  in  harmony  with  the  deepest  truths  per- 
ceived by  the  reason  that  he  advertises  his  intention 
to  purify  men  by  awakening  their  feelings.  There- 
fore, in  his  preface  to  The  Revolt  of  Islam  he  says, 
"I  would  only  awaken  the  feelings,  so  that  the 
reader  should  see  the  beauty  of  true  virtue."  In 
the  preface  to  the  CeiKi,  again,  he  declares,  "Imagi- 
nation is  as  the  immortal  God  which  should  take 
flesh  for  the  redemption  of  human  passion." 

The  poet,  while  thus  expressing  absolute  faith  in 
the  power  of  beauty  to  redeem  the  world,  yet  is 
obliged  to  take  into  account  the  Platonic  distinc- 
tion between  the  beautiful  and  the  lover  of  the  beau- 
tiful.^ No  man  is  pure  poet,  he  admits,  but  in  pro- 
portion as  he  approaches  perfect  artistry,  his  life 
is  purified.  Shelley  is  expressing  the  beliefs  of  prac- 
tically all  artists  when  he  says,  "The  greatest  poets 
have  been  men  of  the  most  spotless  virtue,  of  the 
most  consummate  prudence,  and,  if  we  would  look 
into  the  interior  of  their  lives,  the  most  fortunate 
of  men;  and  the  exceptions,  as  they  regard  those 
who  possess  the  poetical  faculty  in  a  high,  yet  an 
inferior  degree,  will  be  found  upon  consideration  to 
confirm,  rather  than  to  destroy,  the  rule."  ^  Sid- 
ney Lanier's  verse  expresses  this  argument  of  Shel- 
ley precisely.  In  The  Crystal,  Lanier  indicates  that 
the  ideal  poet  has  never  been  embodied.  Pointing 
out  the  faults  of  his  favorite  poets,  he  contrasts  their 

*  Symposium,  §  204. 

*  The  Defense  of  Poetry. 


The  Poet's  Morality  257 

muddy  characters  with  the  perfect  purity  of  Christ. 
And  in  Life  and  Song  he  repeats  the  same  idea : 

None  of  the  singers  ever  yet 
Has  wholly  lived  his  minstrelsy, 
Or  truly  sung  his  true,  true  thought. 

Philosophers  may  retort  that  this  imperfection  in 
the  singer's  life  arises  not  merely  from  the  inevi- 
table difference  between  the  lover  and  the  beauty 
which  he  loves,  but  from  the  fact  that  the  object  of 
the  poet's  love  is  not  really  that  highest  beauty  which 
is  identical  with  the  good.  Poets  are  content  with 
the  "many  beautiful,''  Plato  charges,  instead  of 
pressing  on  to  discover  the  "one  beautiful,"  ^ — that 
is,  they  are  ravished  by  the  beauty  of  the  senses, 
rather  than  by  the  beauty  of  the  ideal. 

Possibly  this  is  true.  We  have  had,  in  recent 
verse,  a  sympathetic  expression  of  the  final  step  in 
Plato's  ascent  to  absolute  beauty,  hence  to  absolute 
virtue.  It  is  significant,  however,  that  this  verse  is 
in  the  nature  of  a  farewell  to  verse  writing.  In  The 
Symbol  Seduces,  "A.  E,"  exclaims, 

I  leave 
For  Beauty,  Beauty's  rarest  flower, 
For  Truth,  the  lips  that  ne'er  deceive ; 
For  Love,  I  leave  Love's  haunted  bower. 

But  this  is  exactly  what  the  poet,  as  poet,  cannot  do. 
It  may  be,  as  Plato  declared,  that  he  is  missing  the 
supreme   value   of   life   by   clinging  to   the    "many 

"■  Republic,  VI,  507  B. 


258  The  Poet's  Poet 

beautiful,"  instead  of  the  "one  beautiful,"  but  if 
he  does  not  do  so,  all  the  colour  of  his  poetical  gar- 
ment falls  away  from  him,  and  he  becomes  pure 
philosopher.  There  is  an  infinite  promise  in  the 
imperfection  of  the  physical  world  that  fascinates 
the  poet.  Life  is  to  him  "a  dome  of  many  colored 
glass"  that  reveals,  yet  stains,  "the  white  radiance  of 
eternity."  If  it  were  possible  for  him  to  gaze  upon 
beauty  apart  from  her  sensuous  embodiment,  it  is 
doubtful  if  he  would  find  her  ravishing. 

This  is  only  to  say  that  there  is  no  escaping  the 
fundamental  aesthetic  problem.  Is  the  artist  the  imi- 
tator of  the  physical  world,  or  the  revealer  of  the 
spiritual  world?  He  is  both,  inevitably,  if  he  is  a 
great  poet.  Hence  there  is  a  duality  in  his  moral 
life.  If  one  aspect  of  his  genius  causes  him  to  be 
rapt  away  from  earthly  things,  in  contemplation  of 
the  heavenly  vision,  the  other  aspect  no  less  demands 
that  he  live,  with  however  pure  a  standard,  in  the 
turmoil  of  earthly  passions.  In  the  period  which 
we  have  under  discussion,  it  is  easy  to  separate  the 
two  types  and  choose  between  them.  Enthusiasts 
may,  according  to  their  tastes,  laud  the  poet  of 
Byronic  worldliness  or  of  Shelleyan  otherworldli- 
ness.  But,  of  course,  this  is  only  because  this  time 
boasts  of  no  artist  of  first  rank.  When  one  con- 
siders the  preeminent  names  in  the  history  of  poetry, 
it  is  not  so  easy  to  make  the  disjunction.  If  the 
gift  of  even  so  great  a  poet  as  Milton  was  compatible 
with  his  developing  one  side  of  his  genius  only,  we 


The  Poet's  Morality  259 

yet  feel  that  Milton  is  a  great  poet  with  limitations, 
and  cannot  quite  concede  to  him  equal  rank  with 
Shakespeare,  or  Dante,  in  whom  the  hybrid  nature 
of  the  artist  is  manifest. 


VI 

THE  POET'S  RELIGION 

^T^HERE  was  a  time,  if  we  may  trust  anthro- 
-^  pologists,  when  the  poet  and  the  priest  were 
identical,  but  the  modem  zeal  for  specialization  has 
not  tolerated  this  doubling  of  function.  So  utterly 
has  the  poet  been  robbed  of  his  priestly  character 
that  he  is  notorious,  nowadays,  as  possessing  no  re- 
ligion at  all.  At  least,  representatives  of  the  three 
strongest  critical  forces  in  society,  philosophers, 
puritans  and  plain  men,  assert  with  equal  vehemence 
that  the  poet  has  no  religion  that  agrees  with  their 
interpretation  of  that  word. 

As  was  the  case  in  their  attack  upon  the  poet's 
morals,  so  in  the  refusal  to  recognize  his  religious 
beliefs,  the  poet's  three  enemies  are  in  merely  ac- 
cidental agreement.  The  philosopher  condemns  the 
poet  as  incapable  of  forming  rational  theological 
tenets,  because  his  temper  is  unspeculative,  or  at 
most,  carries  him  no  farther  than  a  materialistic 
philosophy.  The  puritan  condemns  the  poet  as 
lacking  reverence,  that  is,  as  having  no  "religious 
instinct."  The  plain  man,  of  course,  charges  the 
poet,  in  this  particular  as  in  all  others,  with  failure 
to  conform.  The  poet  shows  no  respect,  he  avers, 
for  the  orthodox  beliefs  of  society. 

260 


The  Poet's  Religion  261 

The  quarrel  of  the  poet  and  the  philosopher  has 
at  no  time  been  more  in  evidence  than  at  present. 
The  unspeculativeness  of  contemporary  poetry  is 
almost  a  creed.  Poets,  if  they  are  to  be  read,  must 
take  a  solemn  pledge  to  confine  their  range  of  sub- 
ject-matter to  fleeting  impressions  of  the  world  of 
sense.  The  quarrel  was  only  less  in  evidence  in 
the  period  just  before  the  present  one,  at  the  time 
when  the  cry,  "art  for  art's  sake,"  held  the  atten- 
tion of  the  public.  At  that  time  philosophers  could 
point  out  that  Walter  Pater,  the  molder  of  poet's 
opinions,  had  said,  "It  is  possible  that  metaphysics 
may  be  one  of  the  things  which  we  must  renounce, 
if  we  would  mould  our  lives  to  artistic  perfection." 
This  narrowness  of  interest,  this  deliberate  shutting 
of  one's  self  up  within  the  confines  of  the  physically 
appealing,  has  been  believed  to  be  characteristic 
of  all  poets.  The  completeness  of  their  satisfaction 
in  what  has  been  called  "the  aesthetic  moment"  is 
the  death  of  their  philosophical  instincts.  The  im- 
mediate perception  of  flowers  and  birds  and  breezes 
is  so  all-sufficing  to  them  that  such  phenomena  do 
not  send  their  minds  racing  back  on  a  quest  of  first 
principles.     Thus  argue  philosophers. 

Such  a  conclusion  the  poet  denies.  The  philoso- 
pher, to  whom  a  sense-impression  is  a  mere  needle- 
prick,  useful  only  as  it  starts  his  thoughts  off  on  a 
tangent  from  it  to  the  separate  world  of  ideas,  is 
not  unnaturally  misled  by  the  poet's  total  absorp- 
tion in  the  world  of  sense.  But  the  poet  is  thus 
absorbed,  not,  as  the  philosopher  implies,  because 


262  The  Poet^s  Poet 

he  denies,  or  ignores,  the  existence  of  ideas,  but  be- 
cause he  cannot  conceive  of  disembodied  ideas. 
Walter  Pater's  reason  for  rejecting  philosophy  as 
a  handicap  to  the  poet  was  that  philosophy  robs  the 
world  of  its  sensuousness,  as  he  believed.  He  ex- 
plained the  conception  of  philosophy  to  which  he  ob- 
jected, as  follows: 

To  that  gaudy  tangle  of  what  gardens,  after  all,  are 
meant  to  produce,  in  the  decay  of  time,  as  we  may  think 
at  first  sight,  the  systematic,  logical  gardener  put  his 
meddlesome  hand,  and  straightway  all  ran  to  seed ;  to 
genus  and  species  and  differentia,  into  formal  classes, 
under  general  notions,  and  with — yes !  with  written 
labels  fluttering  on  the  stalks  instead  of  blossoms — a 
botanic  or  physic  garden,  as  they  used  to  say,  instead 
of  our  flower-garden  and  orchard.^ 

But  it  is  only  against  this  particular  conception  of 
philosophy,  which  is  based  upon  abstraction  of  the 
ideal  from  the  sensual,  that  the  poet  demurs.  Be- 
side the  foregoing  view  of  philosophy  expressed 
by  Pater,  we  may  place  that  of  another  poet,  an  ad- 
herent, indeed,  of  one  of  the  most  purely  sensuous 
schools  of  poetry.  Arthur  Symons  states  as  his 
belief,  "The  poet  who  is  not  also  philosopher  is 
like  a  flower  without  a  root.  Both  seek  the  same 
infinitude ;  the  one  apprehending  the  idea,  the  other 
the  image."  ^  That  is,  to  the  poet,  ideality  is  the 
hidden  life  of  the  sensual. 

Wherever   a   dry   as   dust   rationalizing  theology 

*  Plato  and  Platonism. 

*  The  Romantic   Movement,  p.    129. 


The  Poet's  Religion  263 

is  in  vogue,  it  is  true  that  some  poets,  in  their  reac- 
tion, have  gone  to  the  extreme  of  subscribing  to  a 
materialistic  conception  of  the  universe.  Shelley  is 
the  classic  example.  Everyone  is  aware  of  his  revul- 
sion from  Paley's  theolog>%  which  his  father  sternly 
proposed  to  read  aloud  to  him,  and  of  his  noisy  cham- 
pioning of  the  materialistic  cause,  in  Queen  Mab. 
But  Shelley  is  also  the  best  example  that  might  be 
cited  to  prove  the  incompatibility  of  materialism  and 
poetry.  It  might  almost  be  said  that  Shelley  never 
wrote  a  line  of  genuine  poetry  while  his  mind  was 
under  the  bondage  of  materialistic  theory.  For- 
tunately Shelley  was  scarcely  able  to  hold  to  the  de- 
lusion that  he  was  a  materialist  throughout  the 
course  of  an  entire  poem,  even  in  his  extreme  youth. 
To  Shelley,  more  truly  perhaps  than  to  any  other 
poet,  the  physical  world  throbs  with  spiritual  life. 
His  materialistic  theories,  if  more  loudly  vocifer- 
ated, were  of  scarcely  greater  significance  than  were 
those  of  Coleridge,  who  declared,  "After  I  had  read 
Voltaire's  Philosophical  Dictionary,  I  sported  infi- 
del, but  my  infidel  vanity  never  touched  my  heart."  ^ 

A  more  serious  charge  of  atheism  could  be 
brought  against  the  poets  at  the  other  end  of  the  cen- 
tury. John  Davidson  was  a  thoroughgoing  materi- 
alist, and  the  other  members  of  the  school,  made 
sceptic  by  their  admiration  for  the  sophistic  philoso- 
phy of  Wilde,  followed  Davidson  in  his  views.  But 
this  hardly  strengthens  the  philosopher's  charge  that 
materialistic    philosophy    characterizes    poets    as    a 

'James  Gillman,  Life  of  Coleridge,  p.  23. 


264  The  Poet's  Poet 

class,  for  the  curiously  limited  poetry  which  the  1890 
group  produced  might  lead  the  reader  to  assume 
that  spiritual  faith  is  indispensable  to  poets.  If 
idealistic  philosophy,  as  Arthur  Symons  asserts, 
is  the  root  of  which  poetry  is  the  flower,  then  the 
artificial  and  exotic  poetry  of  the  fin  de  Steele  school 
bears  close  resemblance  to  cut  flowers,  already 
drooping. 

It  is  significant  that  the  outstanding  materialist 
among  American  poets,  Foe,  produced  poetry  of 
much  the  same  artificial  temper  as  did  these  men. 
Poe  himself  was  unable  to  accept,  with  any  degree  of 
complacence,  the  materialistic  philosophy  which 
seemed  to  him  the  most  plausible  explanation  of 
life.  One  of  his  best-known  sonnets  is  a  threnody 
for  poetry  which,  he  feels,  is  passing  away  from 
earth  as  materialistic  views  become  generally  ac- 
cepted.^ Sensuous  as  was  his  conception  of  poetry, 
he  yet  felt  that  one  kills  it  in  taking  the  spirit  of 
ideality  out  of  the  physical  world.  "I  really  per- 
ceive," he  wrote  in  this  connection,  "that  vanity 
about  which  most  men  merely  prate, — the  vanity  of 
the  human  or  temporal  life."  ^ 

It  is  obvious  that  atheism,  being  pure  negation, 
is  not  congenial  to  the  poetical  temper.  The  gen- 
eral rule  holds  that  atheism  can  exist  only  where 
the  reason  holds  the  imagination  in  bondage.  It 
was  not  merely  the  horrified  recoil  of  orthodox  opin- 
ion that  prevented  Constance  Naden,  the  most  volu- 

*  See  the  sonnet,  To  Science. 

'  Letter  to  James  Russell  Lowell,  July  2,  1844. 


The  Poet's  Religion  265 

minous  writer  of  atheistic  verse  in  the  last  century, 
from  obtaining  lasting  recognition  as  a  poet.  Verse 
like  hers,  which  expresses  mere  denial,  is  not  es- 
sentially more  poetical  than  blank  paper. 

One  cannot  make  so  sweeping  a  statement  with- 
out at  once  recalling  the  notable  exception,  James 
Thompson,  B.V.,  the  blackness  of  whose  atheistic 
creed  makes  up  the  whole  substance  of  The  City  of 
Dreadful  Night.  The  preacher  brings  comfort  to 
the  tortured  men  in  that  poem,  with  the  words, 

And  now  at  last  authentic  word  I  bring 
Witnessed  by  every  dead  and  living  thing; 
Good  tidings  of  great  joy  for  you,   for  all : 
There  is  no  God ;  no  fiend  with  name  divine 
Made  us  and  tortures  us;  if  we  must  pine 
It  is  to  satiate  no  Being's  gall. 

But  this  poem  is  a  pure  freak  in  poetry.  Perhaps 
it  might  be  asserted  of  James  Thomson,  without 
too  much  casuistry,  that  he  was,  poetically  speaking, 
not  a  materialist  but  a  pessimist,  and  that  the 
strength  of  his  poetic  gift  lay  in  the  thirst  of  his 
imagination  for  an  ideal  world  in  which  his  reason 
would  not  permit  him  to  believe.  One  cannot  say 
of  him,  as  of  Coleridge,  that  "his  unbelief  never 
touched  his  heart."  It  would  be  nearer  the  truth 
to  say  that  his  unbelief  broke  his  heart.  Thomson 
himself  would  be  the  first  to  admit  that  his  vision 
of  the  City  of  Dreadful  Night  is  inferior,  as  poetry, 
to  the  visions  of  William  Blake  in  the  same  city,  of 
whom  Thomson  writes  with  a  certain  wistful  envy, 


266  The  Poet's  Poet 

He  came  to  the  desert  of  London  town, 

Mirk  miles  broad ; 
He  wandered  up  and  he  wandered  down, 

Ever  alone  with  God.^ 

Goethe  speaks  of  the  poet's  impressions  of  the 
outer  world,  the  inner  world  and  the  other  world. 
To  the  poet  these  impressions  cannot  be  distinct, 
but  must  be  fused  in  every  aesthetic  experience.  In 
his  impressions  of  the  physical  world  he  finds,  not 
merely  the  reflection  of  his  own  personality,  but  the 
germ  of  infinite  spiritual  meaning,  and  it  is  the  bal- 
ance of  the  three  elements  which  creates  for  him 
the  "aesthetic  repose." 

Even  in  the  peculiarly  limited  sensuous  verse  of 
the  present  the  third  element  is  implicit.  Other 
poets,  no  less  than  Joyce  Kilmer,  have  a  dim  sense 
that  in  their  physical  experiences  they  are  really 
tasting  the  eucharist,  as  Kilmer  indicates  in  his 
warning. 

Vain  is  his  voice  in  whom  no  longer  dwells 
Hunger  that  craves  immortal  bread  and  wine.* 

Very  dim,  indeed,  it  may  be,  the  sense  is,  yet  in  al- 
most every  verse-writer  of  to-day  there  crops  out, 
now  and  then,  a  conviction  of  the  mystic  signifi- 
cance of  the  physical.^  To  cite  the  most  extreme 
example  of  a  rugged  persistence  of  the  spiritual  life 
in  the  truncated  poetry  of  the  present,  even  Carl 

^  William  Blake. 
'Poets. 

'  See,  for  example,  John  Masefield,  Prayer,  and  The  Seekers; 
and  William  Rose  Benet,  The  Falconer  of  God. 


The  Poet's  Religion  267 

Sandburg  cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  his  birds 

are 

Summer-saulting  for  God's  sake. 

Only  the  poet  seems  to  possess  the  secret  of  the 
fusion  of  sense  and  spirit  in  the  world.  To  the 
average  eye  sense-objects  are  opaque,  or,  at  best, 
transmit  only  a  faint  glimmering  of  an  idea.  To 
Dr.  Thomas  Arnold's  mind  Wordsworth's  concern 
with  the  flower  which  brought  "thoughts  which  do 
often  lie  too  deep  for  tears"  was  ridiculously  ex- 
cessive, since,  at  most,  a  flower  could  be  only  the 
accidental  cause  of  great  thoughts,  a  push,  as  it  were, 
that  started  into  activity  ideas  which  afterward  ran 
on  by  their  own  impulsion.  Tennyson  has  indicated, 
however,  that  the  poetical  feeling  aroused  by  a 
flower  is,  in  its  utmost  reaches,  no  more  than  a 
recognition  of  that  which  actually  abides  in  the 
flower  itself.     He  muses. 

Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 

I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies ; — 

I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all.  in  my  hand, 

Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 

What  you  are,  root  and  all  and  all  in  all, 

I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is. 

By  whatever  polysyllabic  name  the  more  consciously 
speculative  poets  designate  their  philosophical  creed, 
this  belief  in  the  infinite  meaning  of  every  object 
in  the  physical  world  is  pure  pantheism,  and  the 
instinctive  poetical  religion  is  inevitably  a  pantheistic 
one.     All  poetical  metaphor  is  a  confession  of  this 


268  The  Poet's  Poet 

fact,  for  in  metaphor  the  sensuous  and  the  spiritual 
are  conceived  as  one. 

A  pantheistic  rehgion  is  the  only  one  which  does 
not  hamper  the  poet's  unconscious  and  unhamper- 
ing  morality.  He  refuses  to  die  to  this  world  as 
Plato's  philosopher  and  the  early  fathers  of  the 
church  were  urged  to  do,  for  it  is  from  the  physi- 
cal world  that  all  his  inspiration  comes.  If  he  at- 
tempts to  turn  away  from  it,  he  is  bewildered,  as 
Christina  Rossetti  was,  by  a  duality  in  his  nature,  by 

The  fooHshest  fond  folly  of  a  heart 

Divided,  neither  here  nor  there  at  rest, 

That  hankers  after  Heaven,  but  clings  to  earth.^ 

On  the  other  hand,  if  he  tries  to  content  himself 
with  the  merely  physical  aspects  of  things,  he  finds 
that  he  cannot  crush  out  of  his  nature  a  mysticism 
quite  as  intense  as  that  of  the  most  ascetic  saint. 
Only  a  religion  which  maintains  the  all-pervasive 
oneness  of  both  elements  in  his  nature  can  wholly 
satisfy  him. 

Not  infrequently,  poets  have  given  this  instinc- 
tive faith  of  theirs  a  conscious  formulation.  Cole- 
ridge, with  his  indefatigable  quest  of  the  unity  un- 
derlying "the  Objective  and  Subjective,"  did  so. 
Shelley  devoted  a  large  part  of  Prometheus  Un- 
bound and  the  conclusion  of  Adonais  to  his  pan- 
theistic views.  Wordsworth  never  wavered  in  his 
worship  of  the  sense  world  which  was  yet  spiritual, 
^  Later  Life,  Sonnet  24. 


The  Poet's  Religion  269 

The  Being  that  is  in  the  clouds  and  air, 
That  is  in  the  green  leaves  among  the  groves,^ 

and  was  led  to  the  conclusion, 

It  is  my  faith  that  every  flower 
Enjoys  the  air  it  breathes,^ 

Tennyson,  despite  the  restlessness  of  his  specula- 
tive temper,  was  ever  returning  to  a  pantheistic 
creed.  The  same  is  true  of  the  Brownings.  Arnold 
is,  of  course,  undecided  upon  the  question,  and  now 
approves,  now  rejects  the  pessimistic  view  of  pan- 
theism expressed  in  Enipedocles  on  ^tna,  in  ac- 
cordance with  his  change  of  mood  putting  the  poem 
in  and  out  of  the  various  editions  of  his  works. 
But  wherever  his  poetry  is  most  worthy,  his  wor- 
ship of  nature  coincides  with  Wordsworth's  pan- 
theistic faith.  Swinburne's  Hertha  is  one  of  the 
most  thoroughgoing  expressions  of  pantheism.  At 
the  present  time,  as  in  much  of  the  poetry  of  the 
past,  the  pantheistic  feeling  is  merely  implicit.  One 
of  the  most  recent  conscious  formulations  of  it  is 
in  Le  Gallienne's  Natural  Religion,  wherein  he  ex- 
plains the  grounds  of  his  faith, 

Up  through  the  mystic  deeps  of  sunny  air 
I  cried  to  God,  "Oh  Father,  art  thou  there?" 
Sudden  the  answer  like  a  flute  I  heard ; 
It  was  an  angel,  though  it  seemed  a  bird. 

On  the  whole  the  poet  might  well  wax  indignant 

over   the   philosopher's   charge.      It   is   hardly    fair 

'  Hart  Leap  Well. 

^  Lines  Written  in  Early  Spring. 


270  The  Poet's  Poet 

to  accuse  the  poet  of  being  indifferent  to  the  realm 
of  ideas,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  not  only 
tries  to  establish  himself  there,  but  to  carry  every- 
thing else  in  the  universe  with  him. 

The  charge  of  the  puritan  appears  no  more  just 
to  the  poet  than  that  of  the  philosopher.  How  can  it 
be  true,  as  the  puritan  maintains  it  to  be,  that  the 
poet  lacks  the  spirit  of  reverence,  when  he  is  con- 
stantly incurring  the  ridicule  of  the  world  by  the  awe 
with  which  he  regards  himself  and  his  creations? 
No  power,  poets  aver,  is  stronger  to  awaken  a  re- 
ligious mood  than  is  the  quietude  of  the  beauty 
which  they  worship.  Wordsworth  says  that  poetry 
can  never  be  felt  or  rightly  estimated  "without  love 
of  human  nature  and  reverence  for  God,"  ^  because 
poetry  and  religion  are  of  the  same  nature.  If  re- 
ligion proclaims  cosmos  against  chaos,  so  also  does 
poetry,  and  both  derive  the  harmony  and  repose 
that  inspire  reverence  from  this  power  of  revela- 
tion. 

But,  the  puritan  objects,  the  overweening  pride 
which  is  one  of  the  poet's  most  distinctive  traits 
renders  impossible  the  humility  of  spirit  charac- 
teristic of  religious  reverence. 

It  is  true  that  the  poet  repudiates  a  religion  that 
humbles  him ;  this  is  one  of  the  strongest  reasons 
for  his  pantheistic  leanings. 

There  is  no  God,  O  son! 
If  thou  be  none,^ 

'  Letter  to  Lady  Beaumont,  May  21,    1807. 
"  On  the  Downs. 


The  Poet's  Religion  271 

Swinburne  represents  nature  as  crying  to  man,  and 
this  suits  the  poet  exactly.  Perhaps  Swinburne's 
prose  shows  more  clearly  than  his  poetry  the  diver- 
gence of  the  puritan  temper  and  the  poetical  one 
in  the  matter  of  religious  humility.  "We  who 
worship  no  material  incarnation  of  any  qualities," 
he  wrote,  "no  person,  may  worship  the  Divine  Hu- 
manity; the  ideal  of  human  perfection  and  aspira- 
tion, without  worshipping  any  god,  any  person,  any 
fetish  at  all.  Therefore  I  might  call  myself,  if  I 
wished,  a  kind  of  Christian  (of  the  Church  of 
Blake  and  Shelley)  but  assuredly  in  no  sense  a 
theist."  1 

Nothing  less  than  complete  fusion  of  the  three 
worlds  spoken  of  by  Goethe,  will  satisfy  the  poet.  If 
fusion  of  the  outer  world  and  the  other  world  re- 
sults in  the  pantheistic  color  of  the  poet's  religion, 
the  third  element,  the  inner  world,  makes  it  im- 
perative that  the  poet's  divinity  should  be  a  personal 
one,  no  less,  in  fact,  than  a  deification  of  his  own 
nature.  This  tendency  of  the  poet  to  create  God 
in  his  own  image  is  frankly  acknowledged  by  Mrs. 
Browning  in  prayer  to  the  "Poet  God."  " 

Of  all  English  writers,  William  Blake  affords 
the  clearest  revelation  of  the  poet's  instinctive  at- 
titude, because  he  is  most  courageous  in  carrying 
the  implications  of  poetic  egotism  to  their  logical 
conclusion.  In  tlie  Proplietic  Books,  in  particular, 
Blake   boldly  expresses  all   that   is   implicit   in   the 

*  Edmund  Gosse,  Swinburne,  p.  309. 

*  A  Vision  of  Poets. 


272  The  Poet's  Poet 

poet's  yearning  for  a  religion  which  will  not  humble 
and  thwart  his  nature,  but  will  exalt  and  magnify  it. 
Even  the  puritan  cannot  affirm  that  the  poet's  de- 
mand for  recognition,  in  his  religious  belief,  of 
every  phase  of  his  existence,  has  not  flowered,  once, 
at  least,  in  most  genuinely  religious  poetry,  for  the 
puritan  himself  feels  the  power  of  Emily  Bronte  s 
Last  Lines,  in  which  she  cries  with  proud  and  tri- 
umphant faith, 

Though  earth  and  man  were  gone, 
And  suns  and  universes  ceased  to  be, 
And  Thou  wert  left  alone, 
Every  existence  would  exist  in  Thee. 

There  is  not  room  for  Death, 

Nor  atom  that  his  might  could  render  void; 

Thou,  Thou  art  Being  and  Breath, 

And  what  Thou  art  may  never  be  destroyed. 

There  remains  the  plain  man  to  be  dealt  with. 
What,  he  reiterates,  has  the  poet  to  say  for  his  ortho- 
doxy? If  he  can  combine  his  poetical  illusions  about 
the  divinity  of  nature  and  the  superlative  and  awe- 
some importance  of  the  poet  himself  with  regular 
attendance  at  church;  if  these  phantasies  do  not 
prevent  him  from  sincerely  and  thoughtfully  re- 
peating the  Apostle's  creed,  well  and  good.  The 
plain  man's  religious  demands  upon  the  poet  are 
really  not  excessive,  yet  the  poet,  from  the  romantic 
period  onward,  has  taken  delight  in  scandalizing 
him. 


The  Poet's  Religion  273 

In  the  eighteenth  century  poets  seem  not  to 
have  been  averse  to  placating  their  enemies  by  pub- 
Hshing  their  attendance  upon  the  appointed  means 
of  grace.  Among  the  more  conservative  poets,  this 
attitude  lasted  over  into  the  earlier  stages  of  the 
romantic  movement.  So  late  a  poet  as  Bowles  de- 
lighted to  stress  the  "churchman's  ardor"  of  the 
poet.^  Southey  also  was  ready  to  exhibit  his  punc- 
tilious orthodoxy.  Yet  poor  Southey  was  the  un- 
witting cause  of  the  impiety  of  his  brothers  for  many 
years,  inasmuch  as  Byron's  A  Vision  of  Judgment, 
with  its  irresistible  satire  on  Southey,  sounded  the 
death-knell  of  the  narrowly  religious  poet. 

The  vogue  which  the  poet  of  religious  ill-repute 
enjoyed  during  the  romantic  period  was,  of  course, 
a  very  natural  phase  of  "the  renaissance  of  won- 
der." The  religious  "correctness"  of  the  eighteenth 
century  inevitably  went  out  of  fashion,  in  poetic 
circles,  along  with  the  rest  of  its  formalism.  Poets 
vied  with  one  another  in  forming  new  and  daring 
conceptions  of  God.  There  was  no  question,  in  the 
romantic  revolt,  of  yielding  to  genuine  atheism. 
"The  worst  of  it  is  that  I  do  believe,"  said  Byron, 
discussing  his  bravery  under  fear  of  death.  "Any- 
thing but  the  Church  of  England,"  was  the  attitude 
by  which  Byron  shocked  the  orthodox.  "I  think," 
he  wrote,  "people  can  never  have  enough  of  re- 
ligion, if  they  are  to  have  any.  I  incline  myself 
very  much  to  the  Catholic  doctrine."  -     Cai}i,  how- 

*  See  his  verse  on  Southey  and  Milton. 
'  Letter  to  Tom  Moore,  March  4,  1822.     See  also  the  letter 
to  Robert  Charles  Dallas,  January  21,  1808. 


274  The  Poet's  Poet 

ever,  is  not  a  piece  of  Catholic  propaganda,  and  the 
chief  significance  of  Byron's  religious  poetry  lies  in 
his  romantic  delight  in  arraigning  the  Almighty  as 
well  as  Episcopalians. 

Shelley  comes  out  even  more  squarely  than 
Byron  against  conventional  religion.  In  Jtdian  and 
Maddalo,  he  causes  Byron  to  say  of  him, 

You  were  ever  still 
Among  Christ's  flock  a  perilous  infidel. 

Shelley  helped  to  foster  the  tradition,  too,  that  the 
poet  was  persecuted  by  the  church.  In  Rosalind  and 
Helen,  the  hero  was  hated  by  the  clergy. 

For  he  made  verses  wild  and  queer 

Of  the  strange  creeds  priests  hold  so  dear, 

and  this  predilection  for  making  them  wild  and 
queer  resulted  in  Lionel's  death,  for 

The  ministers  of  misrule  sent 
Seized  on  Lionel  and  bore 
His  chained  limbs  to  a  dreary  tower. 
For  he,  they  said,  from  his  mind  had  bent 
Against  their  gods  keen  blasphemy. 

The  most  notable  illustration  of  this  phase  of  Shel- 
ley's thought  is  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  wherein  the 
poets,  Laon  and  Cythna,  are  put  to  death  by  the 
priests,  who  regard  them  as  their  worst  enemies. 

Bums,  also,  took  a  certain  pleasure  in  unortho- 
doxy,  and  later  poets  have  gloried  in  his  attitude. 


The  Poet's  Religion  275 

Swinburne,  in  particular,  praises  his  daring,  in  that 
he 

Smote  the  God  of  base  men's  choice 
At  God's  own  gate.^ 

Young  poets  have  not  yet  lost  their  taste  for  re- 
ligious persecution.  It  is  a  great  disappointment 
to  them  to  find  it  difficult  to  strike  fire  from  the 
faithful  in  these  days.  Swinburne  in  his  early 
poetry  denounced  the  orthodox  God  with  such  vigor 
that  he  roused  a  momentary  flutter  of  horror  in 
the  church,  but  nowadays  the  young  poet  who  craves 
to  manifest  his  spiritual  daring  is  far  more  likely 
to  find  himself  in  the  position  of  Rupert  Brooke,  of 
whom  someone  has  said,  "He  imagines  the  poet  as 
going  on  a  magnificent  quest  to  curse  God  on  his 
throne  of  fire,  and  finding — nothing." 

The  poet's  youthful  zest  in  scandalizing  the  ortho- 
dox is  likely,  however,  to  be  early  outgrown.  As 
the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  his  finding  a  God 
worthy  of  his  adoration  become  manifest  to  him,  it 
may  be,  indeed,  with  a  sigh  that  he  turns  from  the 
conventional  religion  in  which  so  many  men  find 
certitude  and  place.  This  is  the  mood,  frequently,  of 
Browning,-  of  Tennyson,^  of  Arnold,'*  of  Clough.'* 
So,  too,  James  Thomson  muses  with  regret, 

*  Burns. 

*  See  Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day. 

*  See  In  Memoriam. 

*  See  Dover  Beach. 

"See  The  New  Sinai,  Qui  Laborat  Orat,  Hymnos  Amnos, 
Epistrausium. 


2j(i  The  Poet's  Poet 

How  sweet  to  enter  in,  to  kneel  and  pray 
With  all  the  others  whom  we  love  so  well ! 
All  disbelief  and  doubt  might  pass  away, 
And  peace  float  to  us  with  its  Sabbath  bell. 
Conscience  replies,  There  is  but  one  good  rest, 
Whose  head  is  pillowed  upon  Truth's  pure  breast.^ 

In  fact,  as  the  religious  world  grows  more  broad- 
minded,  the  mature  poet  sometimes  appeals  to  the 
orthodox  for  sympathy  when  his  daring  religious 
questing  threatens  to  plunge  him  into  despair.  The 
public  is  too  quick  to  class  him  with  those  whose 
doubt  is  owing  to  lassitude  of  mind,  rather  than 
too  eager  activity.  Tennyson  is  obliged  to  remind 
his  contemporaries, 

There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds. 

Browning,  as  always,  takes  a  hopeful  view  of  human 

stupidity   when    he   expresses   his   belief   that   men 

will   not   long   "persist   in  confounding,    any  more 

than   God   confounds,   with   genuine    infidelity   and 

atheism    of    the    heart    those    passionate    impatient 

struggles  of  a  boy  toward  truth  and  love."  " 

The  reluctance  of  the  world  to  give  honor  too 

freely   to   the  poet   who  prefers   solitary   doubt   to 

common  faith  is,  probably  enough,  due  to  a  shrewd 

suspicion  that  the  poet  finds  religious  perplexity  a 

very  satisfactory  poetic  stimulus.     In  his  character 

as  man  of  religion  as  in  that  of  lover,  the  poet  is 

^  The  Reclusant. 

'Preface   to    the    Letters    of    Shelley    (afterwards    proved 
spurious). 


The  Poet's  Religion  277 

apt  to  feel  that  his  thirst,  not  the  quenching  of  it, 
is  the  aesthetic  experience.  There  is  not  much  ques- 
tion that  since  the  beginning  of  the  romantic  move- 
ment, at  least,  religious  doubt  has  been  more  pro- 
lific of  poetry  than  religious  certainty  has  been. 
Even  Covvper,  most  orthodox  of  poets,  composed 
his  best  religious  poetry  while  he  was  tortured  by 
doubt.  One  does  not  deny  that  there  is  good  poetry 
in  the  hymn  books,  expressing  settled  faith,  but  no 
one  will  seriously  contend,  I  suppose,  that  any  con- 
tentedly orthodox  poet  of  the  last  century  has  given 
us  a  body  of  verse  that  compares  favorably,  in  purely 
poetical  merit,  with  that  of  Arnold. 

Against  the  imputation  that  he  deliberately  dallies 
with  doubt,  the  poet  can  only  reply  that,  again  as  in 
the  case  of  his  human  loves,  longing  is  strong  enough 
to  spur  him  to  poetic  achievement,  only  when  it  is 
a  thirst  driving  him  mad  with  its  intensity.  The 
poet,  in  the  words  of  a  recent  poem,  is  "homesick 
after  God,"  and  in  the  period  of  his  blackest  doubt 
beats  against  the  wall  of  his  reason  with  the  cry, 

Ah,  but  there  should  be  one! 
There  should  be  one.     And  there's  the  bitterness 
Of  this  unending  torture-place  for  men, 
For  the  proud  soul  that  craves  a  perfectness 
That  might  outwear  the  rotting  of  all  things 
Rooted  in  earth.^ 

The  public  which  refuses  to  credit  the  poet  with 
earnestness   in  his  quest   of   God  may  misconceive 
^Josephine  Preston  Peabody,  Marlowe. 


278  The  Poet's  Poet 

the  dignified  attempts  of  Arnold  to  free  himself 
from  the  tangle  of  doubt,  and  deem  his  beautiful 
gestures  purposely  futile,  but  before  condemning  the 
poetic  attitude  toward  religion  it  must  also  take  into 
account  the  contrary  disposition  of  Browning  to  kick 
his  way  out  of  difficulties  with  entire  indifference 
to  the  greater  dignity  of  an  attitude  of  resignation ; 
and  no  more  than  Arnold  does  Browning  ever  de- 
pict a  poet  who  achieves  religious  satisfaction.  Thus 
the  hero  of  Pauline  comes  to  no  triumphant  issue, 
though  he  maintains, 

I  have  always  had  one  lode-star ;  now 
As  I  look  back,  I  see  that  I  have  halted 
Or  hastened  as  I  looked  towards  that  star, 
A  need,  a  trust,  a  yearning  after  God. 

The  same  bafflement  is  Sordello's,  over  whom  the 
author  muses, 

Of  a  power  above  you  still. 
Which,  utterly  incomprehensible. 
Is  out  of  rivalry,  which  thus  you  can 
Love,  though  unloving  all  conceived  by  man — 
What  need !    And  of — none  the  minutest  duct 
To  that  out-nature,   naught   that  would  instruct 
And  so  let  rivalry  begin  to  live — 
But  of  a  Power  its  representative 
Who,  being  for  authority  the  same. 
Communication   different,   should   claim 
A  course,  the  first  chosen,  but  the  last  revealed, 
This  human  clear,  as  that  Divine  concealed — 
What  utter  need ! 

There   is,   after   all,   small   need   that  the   public 
should   charge  the  poet  with  deliberate   failure  to 


The  Poet's  Religion  279 

gain  a  satisfactory  view  of  the  deity.  The  quest  of 
a  God  who  satisfies  the  poet's  demand  that  He  shall 
include  all  life,  satisfy  every  impulse,  be  as  personal 
as  the  poet  himself,  and  embody  only  the  harmony 
of  beauty,  is  bound  to  be  a  long  one.  It  appears 
inevitable  that  the  poet  should  never  get  more  than 
incomplete  and  troubled  glimpses  of  such  a  deity, 
except,  perhaps,  in 

The  too-bold  dying  song  of  her  whose  soul 
Knew  no  fellow  for  might, 
Passion,  vehemence,  grief, 
Daring,  since  Byron  died.^ 

A  complete  view  of  the  poet's  deity  is  likely  al- 
ways to  be  as  disastrous  as  was  that  of  Lucretius, 
as  Mrs.   Browning  conceived  of  him, 

Who  dropped  his  plummet  down  the  broad 
Deep  universe,  and  said,  "No  God," 
Finding  no  bottom.^ 

If  the  poet's  independent  quest  of  God  is  doomed 
to  no  more  successful  issue  than  this,  it  might  seem 
advisable  for  him  to  tolerate  the  conventional  re- 
ligious systems  of  his  day.  Though  every  poet 
must  feel  with  Tennyson, 

Our  httle  systems  have  their  day, 
They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be; 

They  are  but  broken  lights  of  thee, 

And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they,^ 

*  Said  of  Emily  Bronte,    Arnold,  Haworth  Churchyard. 

*  A  Vision  of  Poets. 

*  In  M emoriam. 


28o  The  Poet's  Poet 

yet  he  may  feel,  with  Rossetti,  that  it  is  best  to 

Let  lore  of  all  theology 

Be  to  thy  soul  what  it  can  be.^ 

Indeed,  many  of  the  lesser  poets  have  capitulated  to 
overtures  of  tolerance  and  not-too-curious  inquiry 
into  their  private  beliefs  on  the  part  of  the  church. 

In  America,  the  land  of  religious  tolerance,  the 
poet's  break  with  the  church  was  never  so  serious 
as  in  England,  and  the  shifting  creeds  of  the  evan- 
gelical churches  have  not  much  hampered  poets.  In 
fact,  the  frenzy  of  the  poet  and  of  the  revivalist 
have  sometimes  been  felt  as  akin.  Noteworthy  in 
this  connection  is  George  Lansing  Raymond,  who 
causes  the  heroes  of  two  pretentious  narrative  poems, 
A  Life  in  Song,  and  The  Real  and  the  Ideal,  to  be- 
gin by  being  poets,  and  end  by  becoming  ministers 
of  the  gospel.  The  verse  of  J.  G.  Holland  is  hardly 
less  to  the  point.  The  poet-hero  of  Holland's  Bitter 
Sweet  is  a  thoroughgoing  evangelist,  who,  in  the 
stress  of  temptation  by  a  woman  who  would  seduce 
him,  falls  upon  his  knees  and  saves  his  own  soul 
and  hers  likewise.  In  Kathrina,  though  the  hero, 
rebellious  on  account  of  the  suicide  of  his  demented 
parents,  remains  agnostic  till  almost  the  end  of  the 
poem,  this  is  clearly  regarded  by  Holland  as  the 
cause  of  his  incomplete  success  as  a  poet,  and  in  the 
end  the  hero  becomes  an  irreproachable  churchman. 
At  present  Vachel  Lindsay  keeps  up  the  tradition  of 
the  poet-revivalist. 

^Soothsay. 


The  Poet's  Religion  281 

Even  in  England,  the  orthodox  poet  has  not  been 
nonexistent.  Christina  Rossetti  portrays  such  an 
one  in  her  autobiographical  poetry.  Jean  Ingelow, 
in  Letters  of  Life  and  Morning,  offers  most  conven- 
tional religious  advice  to  the  young  poet.  And  in 
Coventry  Patmore's  The  Angel  in  the  House,  one 
finds  as  orthodox  a  poet  as  any  that  the  eighteenth 
century  could  afford. 

The  Catholic  church  too  has  some  grounds  for 
its  title,  "nursing  mother  of  poets."  The  rise  of 
the  group  of  Catholic  poets,  Francis  Thompson, 
Alice  Meynell,  and  Lionel  Johnson,  in  particular, 
has  tended  to  give  a  more  religious  cast  to  the  re- 
cent poet.  If  Joyce  Kilmer  had  lived,  perhaps  verse 
on  the  Catholic  poet  would  have  been  even  more  in 
evidence.  But  it  is  likely  that  Joyce  Kilmer  would 
only  have  succeeded  in  inadvertently  bringing  the  re- 
ligious singer  once  more  into  disrepute.  There  is 
perhaps  nothing  nocuous  in  his  creed,  as  he  expressed 
it  in  a  formal  interview :  "I  hope  .  .  .  poetry  .  .  . 
is  reflecting  faith  ...  in  God  and  His  Son  and  the 
Holy  Ghost."  ^  But  Kilmer  went  much  farther  and 
advocated  the  suppression  of  all  writings,  by  Catho- 
lics, which  did  not  specifically  advertise  their  au- 
thor's Catholicism.-  And  such  a  doctrine  immedi- 
ately delivers  the  poet's  freedom  of  inspiration  into 
the  hands  of  censors. 

Perhaps  a  history  of  art  would  not  square  with 

*  Letter  to  Howard  Cook,  June  28,  1918,  Joyce  Kilmer: 
Poems,  Essays  and  Letters,  ed.  Robert  Cortes  Holliday. 

'See  his  letter  to  Aline  Kilmer,  .^pril  21,  1918,  Joyce  Kilmer. 
Poems,  Essays  and  Letters,  ed.  Robert  Cortes  Holliday. 


282  The  Poet's  Poet 

the  repugnance  one  feels  toward  such  censorship. 
Conformance  to  the  religious  beliefs  of  his  time 
certainly  does  not  seem  to  have  handicapped  Homer 
or  Dante,  to  say  nothing  of  the  preeminent  men  in 
other  fields  of  art,  Phidias,  Michael  Angelo,  Ra- 
phael, etc.  Yet  in  the  modern  consciousness,  the 
theory  of  art  for  art's  sake  has  become  so  far  es- 
tablished that  we  feel  that  any  compromise  of  the 
purely  aesthetic  standard  is  a  loss  to  the  artist.  The 
deity  of  the  artist  and  the  churchman  may  be  in 
some  measure  the  same,  since  absolute  beauty  and 
absolute  goodness  are  regarded  both  by  poets  and 
theologians  as  identical,  but  there  is  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  the  poet  may  not  go  so  far  astray  if  he 
cleaves  to  his  own  immediate  apprehension  of  ab- 
solute beauty  as  he  will  if  he  fashions  his  beliefs 
upon  another  man's  stereotyped  conception  of  the 
absolute  good. 

Then,  too,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  part  of  the  poet's 
reluctance  to  embrace  the  creed  of  his  contempo- 
raries arises  from  the  fact  that  he,  in  his  secret 
heart,  still  hankers  for  his  old  title  of  priest.  He 
knows  that  it  is  the  imaginative  faculty  of  the  poet 
that  has  been  largely  instrumental  in  building  up 
every  religious  system.  The  system  that  holds  sway 
in  society  is  apt  to  be  the  one  that  he  himself  has 
just  outgrown ;  he  has,  accordingly,  an  artist's  im- 
patience for  its  immaturity.  There  is  much  truth 
to  the  poet's  nature  in  verses  entitled  The  Idol 
Maker  Prays: 


The  Poet's  Religion  283 

Grant  thou,  that  when  my  art  hath  made  thee  known 
And  others  bow,  I  shall  not  worship  thee, 
But  as  I  pray  thee  now,  then  let  me  pray 
Some  greater  god, — like  thee  to  be  conceived 
Within  my  soul.^ 
*  By  Arthur  Guiterman. 


VII 

THE  PRAGMATIC  ISSUE 

"^T  O  matter  how  strong  our  affection  for  the  in- 
gratiating  ne'er-do-well,  there  are  certain 
charges  against  the  poet  which  we  cannot  ignore. 
It  is  a  serious  thing  to  have  an  alleged  madman, 
inebriate,  and  experimenter  in  crime  running  loose 
in  society.  But  there  comes  a  time  when  our  pa- 
tience with  his  indefatigable  accusers  is  exhausted. 
Is  not  society  going  a  step  too  far  if,  after  the 
poet's  positive  faults  have  been  exhausted,  it  insti- 
tutes a  trial  for  his  sins  of  omission?  Yet  so  it 
is.  If  the  poet  succeeds  in  proving  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  jury  that  his  influence  is  innocuous,  he 
must  yet  hear  the  gruff  decision,  "Perhaps,  as 
you  say,  you  are  doing  no  real  harm.  But  of  what 
possible  use  are  you?  Either  become  an  efficient 
member  of  society,  or  cease  to  exist."  Must  we 
tamely  look  on,  while  the  "light,  winged,  and  holy 
creature,"  as  Plato  called  the  poet,  is  harnessed  to 
a  truck  wagon,  and  made  to  deliver  the  world's 
bread  and  butter?  Would  that  it  were  more  com- 
mon for  poets  openly  to  defy  society's  demands  for 
efficiency,  as  certain  children  and  malaperts  of  the 
poetic  world  have  done !     It  is  pleasant  to  hear  the 

naughty    advice    which    that    especially    impractical 

284 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  285 

poet,  Emily  Dickinson,  gave  to  a  child :  "Be  sure 
to  live  in  vain,  dear.  I  wish  I  had."  ^  And  one 
is  hardly  less  pleased  to  hear  the  irrepressible  Ezra 
Pound  instruct  his  songs, 

But  above  all,  go  to  practical  people,  go,  jangle  their 
door-bells. 

Say  that  you  do  no  work,  and  that  you  will  live  for- 
ever.^ 

Surely  no  one  else  has  had  so  bad  a  time  with  ef- 
ficiency experts  as  has  the  poet,  even  though  every- 
one whose  occupation  does  not  bring  out  sweat  on 
the  brow  is  likely  to  fall  under  their  displeasure. 
The  scholar,  for  instance,  is  given  no  rest  from  their 
querulous  complaints,  because  he  has  been  sitting 
at  his  ease,  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  while  they  have 
dug  the  potatoes  for  his  dinner.  But  the  poet  is 
the  object  of  even  bitterer  vituperation.  He,  they 
remind  him,  does  not  even  trouble  to  maintain  a 
decorous  posture  during  his  fits  of  idleness.  In- 
stead, he  is  often  discovered  flat  on  his  back  in  the 
grass,  with  one  foot  swinging  aloft,  wagging  defiance 
at  an  industrious  world.  What  right  has  he  to 
loaf  and  invite  his  soul,  while  the  world  goes  to 
ruin  all  about  him? 

The  poet  reacts  variously  to  these  attacks.  Some- 
times with  (it  must  be  confessed)  aggravating  meek- 
ness, he  seconds  all  that  his  beraters  say  of  his  idle 

^Gamaliel  Bradford,  Portraits  of  American  IVometi,  p.  248 
(Mrs.  Bianchi.  p.  27)- 
'Salutation  the  Second. 


286  The  Poet's  Poet 

ways.^  Sometimes  he  gives  them  the  plaintive  as- 
surance that  he  is  overtaxed  with  imaginary  work. 
But  occasionally  he  seems  to  be  really  stung  by 
their  reproaches,  and  tries  to  convince  them  that, by 
following  a  strenuous  avocation  he  has  done  his  bit 
for  society,  and  has  earned  his  hours  of  idleness 
as  a  poet. 

When  the  modern  poet  tries  to  establish  his  point 
by  exhibiting  singers  laboring  in  the  business  and 
professional  world,  he  cannot  be  said  to  make  out 
a  very  good  case  for  himself.  He  has  dressed  an 
occasional  fictional  bard  in  a  clergyman's  coat,  in 
memory,  possibly,  of  Donne  and  Herbert.-  In  poli- 
tics, he  has  exhibited  in  his  verses  only  a  few  scat- 
tered figures, — Lucan,^  Petrarch,''  Dante,^  Boccac- 
cio, Walter  Map,^  Milton  "^ — and  these,  he  must  ad- 
mit, belong  to  remote  periods.  Does  D'Annunzio 
bring  the  poet-politician  down  to  the  present?  But 
poets  have  not  yet  begun  to  celebrate  D'Annunzio 
in  verse.     Really  there  is  only  one  figure,  a  protean' 

*  For  verse  dealing  with  the  idle  poet  see  James  Thomson, 
The  Castle  of  Indolence  (Stanzas  about  Samuel  Patterson, 
Dr.  Armstrong,  and  the  author)  ;  Barry  Cornwall,  The  Poet 
and  the  Fisher,  and  Epistle  to  Charles  Lamb  on  His  Emanci- 
pation from  the  Clerkship;  Wordsworth,  Expostulation  and 
Reply;  Emerson,  Apology;  Whitman,  Song  of  Myself;  Helen 
Hunt  Jackson,  The  Poet's  Forge;  P.  H.  Hayne,  An  Idle  Poet 
Dreaming ;  Henry  Timrod,  They  Dub  Thee  Idler;  Washington 
Allston,  Sylphs  of  the  Seasons;  C.  W.  Stoddard,  Utopia;  Alan 
Seeger,  Oneata;  J.  G.  Neihardt,  The  Poet's  Tozvn. 

'  See  G.  L.  Raymond,  A  Life  in  Song,  and  The  Real  and  the 
Ideal. 

'  See  Nero,  Robert  Bridges. 

*  See  Landor,  Giovanna  of  Naples,  and  Andrea  of  Hungary. 

*  See  G.  L.  Raymond,  Dante. 

*  See  A  Becket,  Tennyson. 

'  See  Milton,  Bulwer  Lytton ;  Milton,  George  Meredith. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  287 

one,  in  the  realm  of  practical  life,  to  whom  the  poet 
may  look  to  save  his  reputation.  Shakespeare  he 
is  privileged  to  represent  as  following  many  call- 
ings, and  adorning  them  all.  Or  no,  not  quite  all, 
for  a  recent  verse-writer  has  gone  to  the  length 
of  representing  Shakespeare  as  a  pedagogue,  and  in 
this  profession  the  master  dramatist  is  either  inept, 
or  three  centuries  in  advance  of  his  time,  for  the  citi- 
zens of  Stratford  do  not  take  kindly  to  his  scholas- 
tic innovations.^ 

If  the  poet  does  not  appear  a  brilliant  figure  in 
the  business  world,  he  may  turn  to  another  field  with 
the  confidence  that  here  his  race  will  vindicate  him 
from  the  world's  charges  of  sluggishness  or  weak- 
ness. He  is  wont  proudly  to  declare,  with  Joyce 
Kilmer, 

When  you  say  of  the  making  of  ballads  and  songs  that 

it  is  a  woman's  work, 
You  forget  all  the  fighting  poets  that  have  been  in  every 

land. 
There  was  Byron,  who  left  all  his  lady-loves,  to  fight 

against  the  Turk, 
And  David,  the  singing  king  of  the  Jews,  who  was 

bom  with  a  sword  in  his  hand. 
It  was  yesterday  that  Rupert  Brooke  went  out  to  the 

wars  and   died. 
And  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  lyric  voice  was  as  sweet  as  his 

arm  was  strong, 
And  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  met  the  axe  as  a  lover  meets 

his  bride, 

*  See    William    Shakespeare,    Pedagogue    and    Poacher,    a 
drama,  Richard  Garnett, 


288  The  Poet's  Poet 

Because  he  carried   in  his  heart  the   courage  of   his 
song.^ 

It  was  only  yesterday,  indeed,  that  Rupert  Brooke, 
Francis  Ledwidge,  x\lan  Seeger  and  Joyce  Kilmer 
made  the  memory  of  the  soldier  poet  lasting.  And 
it  cannot  be  justly  charged  that  the  draft  carried 
the  poet,  along  with  the  street-loafer,  into  the  fray, 
an  unwilling  victim.  From  ^schylus  and  David  to 
Byron  and  the  recent  war  poets,  the  singer  may  find 
plenty  of  names  to  substantiate  his  claim  that  he 
glories  in  war  as  his  natural  element.^  A  recent 
writer  has  said,  "The  poet  must  ever  go  where  the 
greatest  songs  are  singing,"  ^  and  nowhere  is  the 
poetry  of  life  so  manifest  as  where  life  is  in  con- 
stant hazard.  The  verse  of  Rupert  Brooke  and  Alan 
Seeger  surely  makes  it  plain  that  warfare  was  the 

^  Joyce  Kilmer,  The  Proud  Poet. 

^  For  poetry  dealing  with  the  poet  as  a  warrior  see  Thomas 
Moore,  The  Minstrel  Boy,  O  Blame  Not  the  Bard,  The  Harp 
That  Once  Through  Tara's  Halls,  Shall  the  Harp  then  be 
Silent,  Dear  Harp  of  My  Country;  Praed,  The  Eve  of  Battle; 
Whitman,  Song  of  the  Banner  at  Daybreak;  E.  C.  Stedman, 
Jean  Prouvaire's  Song  at  the  Barricade,  Byron;  G.  L.  Ray- 
mond, Dante,  A  Song  of  Life;  S.  K.  Wiley,  Dante  and 
Beatrice;  Oscar  Wilde,  Ravenna;  Richard  Realf,  Votes, 
Written  on  the  Night  of  His  Suicide;  Cale  Young  Rice, 
David,  Aeschylus;  Swinburne,  The  Sisters;  G.  E.  Woodberry, 
Requiem;  Rupert  Brooke,  1914;  Joyce  Kilmer,  In  Memory  of 
Rupert  Brooke,  The  Proud  Poet;  Alan  Seeger,  /  Have  a 
Rendes-vous  with  Death,  Sonnet  to  Sidney,  Liebestod;  John 
Bunker,  On  Bidding  Farewell  to  a  Poet  Gone  to  the  Wars; 
Jessie  Rittenhouse,  To  Poets  Who  Shall  Fall  in  Battle;  Ros- 
siter  Johnson,  A  Soldier  Poet;  Herbert  Kaufman,  Hell  Gate 
of  Soissons;  Herbert  Asquith,  The  Volunteer;  Julian  Gren- 
fil.  Into  Battle;  Grace  Hazard  Conkling,  Francis  Ledwidge; 
Richard  Mansfield,  2d,  Song  of  the  Artists;  Norreys  Jephson 
O'Connor,  In  Memoriam:  Francis  Ledwidge;  Donald  F.  Goold 
Johnson,  Rupert  Brooke. 

'  See  Christopher  Morley,  Essay  on  Joyce  Kilmer. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  289 

spark   which   touched   off  their   genius,    even   as   it 
might  have  clone  Byron's, 

When  the  true  lightning  of  his  soul  was  bared, 
Long  smouldering  till  the  Mesolonghi  torch.^ 

But  no  matter  how  heroic  the  poet  may  prove 
himself  to  be,  in  his  character  of  soldier,  or  how 
efficient  as  a  man  of  affairs,  this  does  not  settle 
his  quarrel  with  the  ultilitarians,  for  they  are  not 
to  be  pacified  by  a  recital  of  the  poet's  avocations. 
They  would  remind  him  that  the  world  claims  the 
whole  of  his  time.  If,  after  a  day  of  strenuous  ac- 
tivity, he  hurries  home  with  the  pleasant  conviction 
that  he  has  earned  a  long  evening  in  which  to  woo 
the  Muse,  the  world  is  too  likely  to  peer  through 
the  shutters  and  exclaim,  "What?  Not  in  bed  yet? 
Then  come  out  and  do  some  extra  chores."  If  the 
poet  is  to  prove  his  title  as  an  efficient  citizen,  it  is 
clear  that  he  must  reveal  some  merit  in  verse-mak- 
ing itself.  If  he  can  make  no  more  ambitious  claims 
for  himself,  he  must,  at  the  very  least,  show  that 
Browning  was  not  at  fault  when  he  excused  his  oc- 
cupation : 

I  said,  to  do  little  is  bad ;  to  do  nothing  is  worse, 
And  wrote  verse. ^ 

How  can  the  poet  satisfy  the  philistine  world  that 
his  songs  are  worth  while?  Need  we  ask?  Busi- 
ness men  will  vouch  for  their  utility,  if  he  will  but 

'  Stephen  Phillips,  Emily  Bronte. 
'  Ferishtah's  Fancies. 


290  The  Poet's  Poet 

conform  to  business  men's  ideas  of  art.  Here  is  a 
typical  expression  of  their  views,  couched  in  verse, 
for  the  singer's  better  comprehension : 

The  days  of  long-haired  poets  now  are  o'er, 
The  short-haired  poet  seems  to  have  the  floor; 
For  now  the  world  no  more  attends  to  rhymes 
That  do  not  catch  the  spirit  of  the  times. 
The  short-haired  poet  has  no  muse  or  chief, 
He  sings  of  corn.     He  eulogizes  beef.^ 

But  the  poet  utterly  repudiates  such  a  view  of  him- 
self as  this,  for  he  cannot  draw  his  breath  in  the 
commercial  world.-  In  vain  he  assures  his  would-be 
friends  that  the  intangibilities  wath  which  he  deals 
have  a  value  of  their  own.     Emerson  says, 

One  harvest  from  thy  field 
Homeward  brought  the  oxen  strong; 
A  second  crop  thine  acres  yield 
Which  I  gather  in  a  song.^ 

But  for  this  second  crop  the  practical  man  says  he 
can  find  absolutely  no  market;  hence  overtures  of 
friendliness  between  him  and  the  poet  end  with 
sneers  and  contempt  on  both  sides.  Doubtless  the 
best  way  for  the  poet  to  deal  with  the  perennial 
complaints  of  the  practical-minded,  is  simply  to  state 
brazenly,  as  did  Oscar  Wilde,  "All  art  is  quite  use- 
less." * 

^  "The  Short-haired  Poet,"  in  Common-Sense,  by  E.  F. 
Ware. 

'  Several  poems  lately  have  voiced  the  poet's  horror  of 
materialism.  See  Josephine  Preston  Peabody,  The  Singing 
Man;  Richard  Le  Gallienne,  To  R.  W.  Emerson,  Richard 
Watson  Gilder;  Mary  Robinson,  Art  and  Life. 

*  Apology. 

*  Preface  to  Dorian  Gray. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  291 

Is  the  poet  justified,  then,  in  stopping  his  ears  to 
all  censure,  and  living  unto  himself?  Not  so; 
when  the  hub-bub  of  his  sordid  accusers  dies  away, 
he  is  conscious  of  another  summons,  before  a  tri- 
bunal which  he  cannot  despise  or  ignore.  For  once 
more  the  poet's  equivocal  position  exposes  him  to 
attacks  from  all  quarters.  He  stands  midway  be- 
tween the  spiritual  and  the  physical  worlds,  he  re- 
veals the  ideal  in  the  sensual.  Therefore,  while  the 
practical  man  complains  that  the  poet  does  not  handle 
the  solid  objects  of  the  physical  world,  but  trans- 
mutes them  to  airy  nothings,  the  philosopher,  on  the 
contrary,  condemns  the  poet  because  he  does  not 
wholly  sever  connections  with  this  same  physical 
world,  but  is  continually  hovering  about  it,  like  a 
homesick  ghost. 

Like  the  plain  man,  the  philosopher  gives  the  poet 
a  chance  to  vindicate  his  usefulness.  Plato's  chal- 
lenge is  not  so  age- worn  that  we  may  not  requote 
it.     He  makes  Socrates  say,  in  the  Republic, 

Let  us  assure  our  sweet  friend  (poetry)  and  the 
sister  arts  of  imitation  that  if  she  will  only  prove  her 
title  to  exist  in  a  well-ordered  state,  we  shall  be 
delighted  to  receive  her.  .  .  .  We  are  very  conscious 
of  her  charms,  but  we  may  not  on  that  account  betray 
the  truth.  .  .  .  Shall  I  propose,  then,  that  she  be 
allowed  to  return  from  exile,  but  on  this  condition 
only,  that  she  makes  a  defense  of  herself  in  lyrical  or 
some  other  meter  ?  And  we  may  further  grant  to  those 
of  her  defenders  who  are  lovers  of  poetry  and  yet 
not  poets  the  permission  to  speak  in  prose  on  her 
behalf.     Let  them  show  not  only  that  she  is  pleasant 


292  The  Poet's  Poet 

but  also  useful  to  states  and  to  human  life,  and  we 
will  listen  in  a  kindly  spirit.^ 

One  wonders  why  the  lovers  of  Poetry  have  been 
so  much  more  solicitous  for  her  cause  than  Poetry 
herself  has  appeared  to  be.  Aristotle,  and  after 
him  many  others, — in  the  field  of  English  literature, 
Sidney,  Shelley,  and  in  our  own  day  G.  E.  Wood- 
berry, — have  made  most  eloquent  defenses  in  prose, 
but  thus  far  the  supreme  lyrical  defense  has  not 
been  forthcoming.  Perhaps  Poetry  feels  that  it  is 
beneath  her  dignity  to  attempt  a  utilitarian  justifi- 
cation for  herself.  Yet  in  the  verse  of  the  last  cen- 
tury and  a  half  there  are  occasional  passages  which 
give  the  impression  that  Poetry,  with  childishly 
avei-ted  head,  is  offering  them  to  us,  as  if  to  say, 
"Don't  think  I  would  stoop  to  defend  myself,  but 
here  are  some  things  I  might  say  for  myself,  if  I 
wished." 

Since  the  Platonic  philosopher  and  the  practical 
man  stand  for  antipodal  conceptions  of  reality,  it 
really  seems  too  bad  that  Plato  will  not  give  the 
poet  credit  for  a  little  merit,  in  comparison  with 
his  arch-enemy.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  spec- 
tator of  eternity  and  the  sense-blinded  man  of  the 
street  form  a  grotesque  fraternity,  for  the  nonce, 
and  the  philosopher  assures  the  plain  man  that  he 
is  far  more  to  his  liking  than  is  the  poet.  Plato's 
reasoning  is,  of  course,  that  the  plain  man  at  least 
does  not  tamper  with  the  objects  of  sense,  through 
which  the  philosopher  may  discern  gleams  of  the 
^Republic,  Book  X,  607. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  293 

spiritual  world,  whereas  the  poet  distorts  them  till 
their  real  significance  is  obscured.  The  poet  pre- 
tends that  he  is  giving  their  real  meaning,  even  as 
the  philosopher,  but  his  interpretation  is  false.  He 
is  like  a  man  who,  by  an  ingenious  system  of  cross- 
lights  and  reflections,  creates  a  wraithlike  image  of 
himself  in  the  mirror,  and  alleges  that  it  is  his  soul, 
though  it  is  really  only  a  misleading  and  worthless 
imitation  of  his  body. 

Will  not  Plato's  accusation  of  the  poet's  inferi- 
ority to  the  practical  man  be  made  clearest  if  we 
stay  by  Plato's  own  humble  illustration  of  the  three 
beds?  One,  he  says,  is  made  by  God,  one  by  the 
carpenter,  and  one  by  the  poet.^  Now  the  bed 
which  a  certain  poet,  James  Thomson,  B.  V.,  made, 
is  fairly  well  known.  It  speaks,  in  "ponderous 
bass,"  to  the  other  furniture  in  the  room : 

"I  know  what  is  and  what  has  been ; 
Not  anything  to  me  comes  strange, 
Who  in  so  many  years  have  seen 
And  lived  through  every  kind  of  change. 
I  know  when  men  are  bad  or  good, 
When  well  or  ill,"  he  slowly  said, 
"When  sad  or  glad,  when  sane  or  mad 
And   when  they  sleep  alive  or  dead."  ^ 

Plato  would  say  of  this  majestic  four-poster,  with 

its  multifarious  memories  "of  births  and  deaths  and 

marriage   nights,"   that   it   does   not   come   so  near 

the  essential  idea  of  bedness  as  does  the  most  non- 

'  See  the  Republic  X,  596  B  ff. 
'  In  the  Room. 


294  The  Poet's  Poet 

descript  product  of  the  carpenters'  tools,  James 
Thomson's  poem,  he  would  say,  is  on  precisely 
the  same  plane  as  the  reflection  of  one's  bed  in  the 
mirror  across  the  room.  Therefore  he  inquires, 
"Now  do  you  suppose  that  if  a  person  were  able  to 
make  the  original  as  well  as  the  image,  he  would 
seriously  devote  himself  to  the  image-making 
branch?  Would  he  allow  imitation  to  be  the  ruling 
principle  of  his  life,  as  if  he  had  nothing  higher 
in  him?  .  .  .  Imitation  is  only  a  kind  of  play  or 
sport."  ^ 

It  has  long  been  the  fashion  for  those  who  care 
for  poetry  to  shake  their  heads  over  Plato's  aber- 
ration at  this  point.  It  seems  absurd  enough  to  us 
to  hear  the  utility  of  a  thing  determined  by  its  num- 
ber of  dimensions.  What  virtue  is  there  in  merely 
filling  space?  We  all  feel  the  fallacy  in  such  an 
adaptation  of  Plato's  argument  as  Longfellow  as- 
signs to  Michael  Angelo,  causing  that  versatile  artist 
to  conclude : 

Painting  and  sculpture  are  but  images ; 
Are  merely  shadows  cast  by  outward  things 
On  stone  or  canvas,  having  in  themselves 
No  separate  existence.     Architecture, 
As  something  in  itself,  and  not  an  image, 
A  something  that  is  not,  surpasses  them 
As  substance  shadow,^ 

Yet  it  may  be  that  the  homeliness  of  Plato's  illustra- 
tion has  misled  us  as  to  the  seriousness  of  the  prob- 

^  Republic  X,  599  A. 
"Michael  Angelo. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  295 

lem.  Let  us  forget  about  beds  and  buildings  and 
think  of  actual  life  in  the  more  dignified  way  that 
has  become  habitual  to  us  since  the  war.  Then  it 
must  appear  that  Plato's  charge  is  as  truly  a  live 
issue  here  and  now  as  it  ever  was  in  Athens. 

The  claims  for  the  supremacy  of  poetry,  set 
forth  by  Aristotle,  Sidney  and  the  rest,  seem  to 
weaken,  for  the  time  being,  at  least,  when  we  find 
that  in  our  day  the  judgment  that  poetry  is  inferior 
to  life  comes,  not  from  outsiders,  but  from  men 
who  were  at  one  time  most  ardent  votaries  of  the 
muse.  Repudiation  by  verse-writers  of  poetry's 
highest  claims  we  have  been  accustomed  to  dismiss, 
until  recently,  as  betrayal  of  a  streak  of  common- 
ness in  the  speaker's  nature, — of  a  disposition  to 
value  the  clay  of  life  more  highly  than  the  fire.  We 
were  not,  perhaps,  inclined  to  take  even  so  great 
a  poet  as  Byron  very  seriously  when  he  declared, 
"I  by  no  means  rank  poets  or  poetry  high  in  the, 
scale  of  the  intellect.  It  is  the  lava  of  the  imagina- 
tion, whose  eruption  prevents  an  earthquake.  I  pre- 
fer the  talents  of  action."  But  with  the  outbreak 
of  the  world  war  one  met  unquestionably  sincere 
confession  from  more  than  one  poet  that  he  found 
verse-writing  a  pale  and  anemic  thing.  Thus  "A. 
E."  regretted  the  time  that  he  spent  on  poetry,  sigh- 
ing, 

He  who  might  have  wrought  in  flame 
Only  traced  upon  the  foam.^ 

^  Epilogue. 


296  The  Poet's  Poet 

In  the  same  spirit  are  Joyce  Kilmer's  words,  writ- 
ten shortly  before  his  death  in  the  trenches :  "I  see 
daily  and  nightly  the  expression  of  beauty  in  action 
instead  of  words,  and  I  find  it  more  satisfactory.''  ^ 
Also  we  have  the  decision  of  Francis  Ledwidge,  an- 
other poet  who  died  a  soldier : 

A  keen-edged   sword,  a  soldier's  heart, 
Are  greater  than  a  poet's  art, 
And  greater  than  a  poet's  fame 
A  little  grave  that  has  no  name.^ 

Is  not  our  idealization  of  poets  who  died  in  war  a 
confession  that  we  ourselves  believe  that  they 
chose  the  better  part, — that  they  did  well  to  dis- 
card imitation  of  life  for  life  itself? 

It  is  not  fair  to  force  an  answer  to  such  a  ques- 
tion till  we  have  more  thoroughly  canvassed  poets' 
convictions  on  this  matter.  Do  they  all  admit  the 
justice  of  Plato's  characterization  of  poetry  as  a 
sport,  comparable  to  golf  or  tennis?  In  a  few  spe- 
cific instances,  poets  have  taken  this  attitude  toward 
their  own  verse,  of  course.  There  was  the  "art  for 
art's  sake"  cry,  which  at  the  end  of  the  last  cen- 
tury surely  degenerated  into  such  a  conception  of 
poetry.  There  have  been  a  number  of  poets  like 
Austin  Dobson  and  Andrew  Lang,  who  have  frankly 
regarded  their  verse  as  a  pastime  to  while  away  an 
idle  hour.  There  was  Swinburne,  who  character- 
ized many  of  his  poems  as  being  idle  and  light  as 

^Letter,  May  7,  1918.     See  Joyce  Kilmer's  works,  edited  by 
Richard  Le  Gallienne. 

^Soliloquy. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  297 

white  butterflies.^  But  when  we  turn  away  from 
these  prestidigitators  of  rhymes  and  rhythms,  we 
find  that  no  view  of  poetry  is  less  acceptable  than 
this  one  to  poets  in  general.  They  are  far  more 
likely  to  earn  the  world's  ridicule  by  the  deadly  seri- 
ousness with  which  they  take  verse  writing.  If  the 
object  of  his  pursuit  is  a  sport,  the  average  poet 
is  as  little  aware  of  it  as  is  the  athlete  who  suffers 
a  nervous  collapse  before  the  big  game  of  the  season. 
But  Plato's  more  significant  statement  is  un- 
touched. Is  poetry  an  imitation  of  life?  It  depends, 
of  course,  upon  how  broadly  we  interpret  the  phrase, 
"imitation  of  life."  In  one  sense  almost  every  poet 
would  say  that  Plato  was  right  in  characterizing  poe- 
try thus.  The  usual  account  of  inspiration  points  to 
passive  mirroring  of  life.     Someone  has  said  of  the 

poet, 

As  a  lake 
Reflects  the  flower,  tree,  rock,  and  bending  heaven, 
Shall  he  reflect  our  great  humanity.^ 

And  these  lines  are  not  false  to  the  general  view  of 
the  poet's  function,  but  they  leave  us  leeway  to  quar- 
rel over  the  nature  of  the  reflection  mentioned,  just 
as  we  quarrel  over  the  exact  connotations  of  Plato's 
and  Aristotle's  word,  imitation. 

Even  if  we  hold  to  the  narrower  meaning  of  imi- 
tation, there  are  a  few  poets  who  intimate  that  imi- 
tation alone  is  their  aim  in  writing  poetry.  Denying 
that  life  has  an  ideal  element,  they  take  pains  to 

^  See  the  Dedication  to  Christina  Rossetti,  and  Envoi. 
*  Alexander  Smith,  A  Life  Drama. 


298  The  Poet's  Poet 

mirror  it,  line  for  line,  and  blemish  for  blemish. 
How  can  they  meet  Plato's  question  as  to  their  use- 
fulness? If  life  is  a  hideous,  meaningless  thing, 
as  they  insinuate,  it  is  not  clear  what  merit  can 
abide  in  a  faithful  reflection  of  it.  Let  us  take  the 
case  of  Robert  Service,  who  prided  himself  upon 
the  realism  of  his  war  poetry.^  Perhaps  his  defense 
depends,  more  truly  than  he  realized,  upon  the  im- 
plication contained  in  his  two  lines, 

If  there's  good  in  war  and  crime, 
There  may  be  in  my  bits  of  rhyme.^ 

Yet  the  realist  may  find  a  sort  of  justification  for 
himself;  at  least  James  Thomson,  B.V.,  thinks  he 
has  found  one  for  him.  The  most  thoroughly  hope- 
less exposition  of  the  world's  meaninglessness,  in 
English  poetry,  is  doubtless  Thomson's  City  of 
Dreadful  Night.  Why  does  the  author  give  such 
a  ghastly  thing  to  the  world?  In  order,  he  says,  that 
some  other  clear-eyed  spectator  of  the  nightmare  of 
existence  may  gain  a  forlorn  comfort  from  it,  since 
he  will  know  that  a  comrade  before  him  has  likewise 
seen  things  at  their  blackest  and  worst.  But  would 
Plato  accept  this  as  a  justification  for  realistic  poe- 
try? It  is  doubtful.  No  one  could  be  comforted  by 
a  merely  literal  rendering  of  life.  The  comfort 
must  derive  from  the  personal  equation,  which  is 
the  despair  engendered  in  the  author  by  dreams  of 

*  See  Rhymes  of  a  Red  Cross  Man. 
'  See  Ibid. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  299 

something  better  than  reaHty;  therefore  whatever 
merit  resides  in  such  poetry  comes  not  from  its  real- 
ism, but  from  the  idealism  of  the  writer. 

We  must  not  think  that  all  poets  who  regard  their 
poetry  as  a  reflection  of  this  world  alone,  agree  in 
praising  glaring  realism  as  a  virtue.  Rather,  some 
of  them  say,  the  value  of  their  reflection  lies  in  its 
misty  indistinctness.  Life  may  be  sordid  and  ugly 
at  first  hand,  but  let  the  artist's  reflection  only  be  re- 
mote enough,  and  the  jagged  edges  and  dissonances 
of  color  which  mar  daily  living  will  be  lost  in  the 
purple  haze  of  distance.  Gazing  at  such  a  reflection, 
men  may  perhaps  forget,  for  a  space,  how  dreary 
a  thing  existence  really  is. 

And  they  shall  be  accounted  poet-kings 
Who  simply  tell  the  most  heart-easing  things,^ 

said  Keats  in  his  youth.  Such  a  statement  of  the 
artist's  purpose  inevitably  calls  up  William  Morris : 

Dreamer  of  dreams,  bom  out  of  my  due  time, 
Why  should  I  strive  to  set  the  crooked  straight? 
Let  it  suffice  me  that  my  murmuring  rhyme 
Beats  with  light  wing  against  the  ivory  gate, 
Telling  a  tale,  not  too  importunate 
To  those  who  in  the  sleepy  region  stay. 
Lulled  by  the  singer  of  an  empty  day.^ 

Would  Plato  scoff  at  such  a  formulation  of  the 
artist's  mission?     He  would  rather  condemn  it,  as 

'  Sleep  and  Poetry. 

*  Prologue  to  the  Earthly  Paradise. 


300  The  Poet's  Poet 

fostering  illusion  and  falsehood  in  men's  minds. 
But  we  moderns  are  perhaps  more  world-weary,  less 
sanguine  about  ideal  truth  than  the  ancients.  With 
one  of  our  war  poets,  we  often  plead  for  "song 
that  turneth  toil  to  rest,"  ^  and  agree  with  Keats  that, 
whether  art  has  any  other  justification  or  not,  it 
has  one  "great  end,  to  soothe  the  cares  of  man."  " 
We  are  not  to  imagine  that  many  of  our  poets 
are  content  with  the  idea  that  poetry  has  so  minor 
a  function  as  this.  They  play  with  the  thought  of 
life's  possible  insignificance  and  leave  it,  for  ideal- 
ism is  the  breath  of  life  to  poets,  and  their  ad- 
herence to  realism  amounts  to  suicide.  Poetry  may 
be  comforting  without  being  illusive.  Emerson 
says, 

'Tis  the  privilege  of  art 
Thus  to  play  its  cheerful  part 
Man  on  earth  to  acclimate 
And  bend  the  exile  to  his  fate.^ 

It  is  not,  obviously,  Emerson's  conception  that  the 
poetry  which  brings  this  about  falsifies.  Like  most 
poets,  he  indicates  that  art  accomplishes  its  end,  not 
merely  by  obscuring  the  hideous  accidents  of  life; 
but  by  enabling  us  to  glimpse  an  ideal  element  which 
abides  in  it,  and  is  its  essence. 

Is  the  essence  of  things  really  a  spiritual  mean- 
ing? If  so,  it  seems  strange  that  Plato  should  have 
so  belittled  the  poet's  capacity  to  render  the  spir- 

^  Madison  Cawein,  Preludes. 

'Sleep  and  Poetry. 

'Art. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  301 

itual  meaning  in  verse.  But  it  is  possible  that  the 
artist's  view  as  to  the  relation  of  the  ideal  to  the 
physical  does  not  precisely  square  with  Plato's. 
Though  poets  are  so  constitutionally  Platonic,  in 
this  one  respect  they  are  perhaps  more  truly  Aristo- 
telians. Plato  seems  to  say  that  ideality  is  not,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  essence  of  objects.  It  is  a  light 
reflected  upon  them,  as  the  sun's  light  is  reflected 
upon  the  moon.  So  he  claims  that  the  artist  who 
portrays  life  is  like  one  who,  drawing  a  picture  of 
the  moon,  gives  us  only  a  map  of  her  craters,  and 
misses  entirely  the  only  thing  that  gives  the  moon 
any  meaning,  that  is,  moonlight.  But  the  poet,  that 
lover  of  the  sensuous,  cannot  quite  accept  such  a 
view  as  this.  Ideality  is  truly  the  essence  of  ob- 
jects, he  avers,  though  it  is  overlaid  with  a  mass 
of  meaningless  material.  Hence  the  poet  who  gives 
us  a  representation  of  things  is  not  obscuring  them, 
but  is  doing  us  a  service  by  simplifying  them,  and 
so  making  their  ideality  clearer.  All  that  the  most 
idealistic  poet  need  do  is  to  imitate ;  as  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing says, 

Paint  a  body  well. 

You  paint  a  soul  by  implication,^ 

This  firm  faith  that  the  sensual  is  the  dwelling- 
place  of  the  spiritual  accounts  for  the  poet's  im- 
patience with  the  contention  that  his  art  is  useless 
unless  he  points  a  lesson,  by  manipulating  his  ma- 

^  Aurora   Leigh. 


302  The  Poet's  Poet 

terials  toward  a  conscious  moral  end.  The  poet 
refuses  to  turn  objects  this  way  and  that,  until  they 
catch  a  reflection  from  a  separate  moral  world.  If 
he  tries  to  write  with  two  distinct  purposes,  hoping 
to  "suffice  the  eye  and  save  the  soul  beside,"  ^  as 
Browning  puts  it,  he  is  apt  to  hide  the  intrinsic  spir- 
ituality of  things  under  a  cloak  of  ready-made 
moral  conceptions.  In  his  moments  of  deepest  in- 
sight the  poet  is  sure  that  his  one  duty  is  to  reveal 
beauty  clearly,  without  troubling  himself  about 
moralizing,  and  he  assures  his  readers, 

If  you  get  simple  beauty  and  naught  else. 
You  get  about  the  best  thing  God  invents.^ 

Probably  poets  have  always  felt,  in  their  hearts, 
what  the  radicals  of  the  present  day  are  saying  so 
vehemently,  that  the  poet  should  not  be  expected  to 
sermonize :  "I  wish  to  state  my  firm  belief,"  says 
Amy  Lowell,  "that  poetry  should  not  try  to  teach, 
that  it  should  exist  simply  because  it  is  created 
beauty."  ^ 

Even  conceding  that  the  ideal  lives  within  the 
sensual,  it  may  seem  that  the  poet  is  too  sanguine 
in  his  claim  that  he  is  able  to  catch  the  ideal  and 
significant  feature  of  a  thing  rather  than  its  acci- 
dents. Why  should  this  be?  Apparently  because 
his  thirst  is  for  balance,  proportion,  harmony — 
what  you  will — leading  him  to  see  life  as  a  unity. 

'  The  Ring  and  tJie  Book. 

*  Fra  Lippo  Lippi. 

*  Preface  to  Sword  Blades  and  Poppy  Seed.    See  also  Joyce 
Kilmer,  Letter  to  Howard  W.  Cook,  June  28,  1918. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  303 

The  artist's  eyes  are  able  to  see  life  in  focus,  as  it 
were,  though  it  has  appeared  to  men  of  less  har- 
monious spirit  as 

A  many-sided  mirror. 
Which  could  distort  to  many  a  shape  of  error 
This  true,  fair  world  of  things.^ 

It  is  as  if  the  world  were  a  jumbled  picture  puzzle, 
which  only  the  artist  is  capable  of  putting  together, 
and  the  fact  that  the  essence  of  things,  as  he  con- 
ceives of  them,  thus  forms  a  harmonious  whole  is  to 
him  irrefutable  proof  that  the  intuition  that  leads 
him  to  see  things  in  this  way  is  not  leading  him 
astray.  James  Russell  Lowell  has  described  the 
poet's  achievement : 

With  a  sorrowful  and  conquering  beauty, 

The  soul  of  all  looked  grandly   from  his  eyes.^ 

"The  soul  of  all,"  that  is  the  artist's  revelation.  To 
him  the  world  is  truly  a  universe,  not  a  heterogeneity 
of  unrelated  things.  In  different  mode  from  Lowell, 
Mrs.  Browning  expresses  the  same  conception  of  the 
artist's  imitation  of  life,  inquiring. 

What  is  art 
But  life  upon  the  larger  scale,  the  higher, 
When,  graduating  up  a  spiral  line 
Of  still  expanding  and  ascending  g}res 
It  pushes  toward  the  intense  significance 
Of  all  things,  hungry  for  the  infinite.^ 

*  Shelley,  Prometheus  Unbound. 
'  Ode. 

*  Aurora  Leigh. 


304  The  Poet's  Poet 

The  poet  cannot  accept  Plato's  characterization 
of  him  as  an  imitator,  then,  not  if  this  implies  that 
his  imitations  are  inferior  to  their  objects.  Rather, 
the  poet  proudly  maintains,  they  are  infinitely  su- 
perior, being  in  fact  closer  approximations  to  the 
meaning  of  things  than  are  the  things  themselves. 
Thus  Shelley  describes  the  poet's  work : 

He  will  watch  from  dawn  to  gloom 
The  lake-reflected  sun  illume 
The  yellow  bees  in  the  ivy  bloom, 
Nor  heed  nor  see,  what  things  they  be; 
But  from  these  create  he  can 
Forms  more  real  than  living  man, 
Nurslings  of  immortality.^ 

Therefore  the  poet  has  usually  claimed  for  him- 
self the  title,  not  of  imitator,  but  of  seer.  To  his 
purblind  readers,  who  see  men  as  trees  walking, 
he  is  able,  with  the  search-light  of  his  genius,  to  re- 
veal the  essential  forms  of  things.  Mrs.  Browning 
calls  him  "the  speaker  of  essential  truth,  opposed 
to  relative,  comparative  and  temporal  truth" ;  ^ 
James  Russell  Lowell  calls  him  "the  discoverer  and 
revealer  of  the  perennial  under  the  deciduous";^ 
Emerson  calls  him  "the  only  teller  of  news."  * 

*  Prometheus   Unbound. 
'  Aurora   Leigh. 

*  The  Function  of  the  Poet. 

*  Poetry  and  Imagination.  The  following  are  some  of  the 
poems  asserting  that  the  poet  is  the  speaker  of  ideal  truth: 
Blake,  Hear  the  Voice  of  the  Ancient  Bard;  Montgomery,  A 
Theme  for  a  Poet;  Bowles,  The  Visionary  Boy;  Wordsworth, 
Personal  Talk;  Coleridge,  To  Wm.  Wordsworth;  Arnold,  The 
Austerity  of  Poetry;  Rossetti,  Sonnet,  Shelley;  Bulwer  Lytton, 
The  Dispute  of   the  Poets;   Mrs.   Browning,   Pan  is  Dead; 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  305 

Here  we  are,  then,  at  the  real  point  of  dispute 
between  the  philosopher  and  the  poet.  They  claim 
the  same  vantage-point  from  which  to  overlook  hu- 
man life.  One  would  think  they  might  peacefully 
share  the  same  pinnacle,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  they 
are  continuously  jostling  one  another.  In  vain  one 
tries  to  quiet  their  contentiousness.  Turning  to  the 
most  deeply  Platonic  poets  of  our  period — Coleridge, 
Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Arnold,  Emerson, — one  may 
inquire.  Does  not  your  description  of  the  poet  pre- 
cisely tally  with  Plato's  description  of  the  philoso- 
pher? Yes,  they  aver,  but  Plato  falsified  when  he 
named  his  seer  a  philosopher  rather  than  a  poet.^ 
Surely  if  the  quarrel  may  be  thus  reduced  to  a  mat- 
ter of  terminology,  it  grows  trivial,  but  let  us  see 
how  the  case  stands. 

From  one  approach  the  dispute  seems  to  arise 
from  a  comparison  of  methods.  Coleridge  praises 
the  truth  of   Wordsworth's  poetry  as  being 

Landor,  To  IVordszvorth;  Jean  Ingelow,  The  Star's  Monu- 
ment; Tupper,  Wordsworth;  Tennyson,  The  Poet;  Swinburne, 
The  Death  of  Brouming  (Sonnet  V),  A  Nexv  Year's  Ode; 
Edmund  Gosse,  Epilogue;  James  Russell  Lowell,  Sonnets  XIV 
and  XV  on  IVordszcorth's  Vieivs  of  Capital  Punishment; 
Bayard  Taylor,  For  the  Bryant  Festival;  Emerson,  Saadi;  M. 
Clemmer,  To  Emerson;  Warren  Holden,  Poetry;  P.  H.  Hayne, 
To  Emerson;  Edward  Dowden,  Emerson;  Lucy  Larcom,  R. 
IV.  Emerson;  R.  C.  Robbins,  Emerson;  Henry  Timrod,  A 
Vision  of  Poesy;  G.  E.  Woodberry,  Ode  at  the  Emerson 
Centenary;  Bliss  Carman,  In  a  Copy  of  Browning;  John 
Drinkwater,  The  Loom  of  the  Poets;  Richard  Middleton,  To 
an  Idle  Poet;  Shaemas  O'Sheel,  The  Poet  Sees  that  Truth 
and  Passion  are  One. 

*  In  rare  cases,  the  poet  identifies  himself  with  the  philoso- 
pher. See  Coleridge,  The  Garden  of  Boccaccio;  Kirke  White, 
Lines  Written  on  Reading  Some  of  His  Own  Earlier  Son- 
nets; Bulwer  Lytton,  Milton;  George  E.  Woodberry,  Agathon. 


3o6  The  Poet's  Poet 

Not  learnt,  but  native,  her  own  natural  notes.^ 

Wordsworth  himself  boasts  over  the  laborious  in- 
vestigator of  facts, 

Think  you,  mid  all  this  mighty  sum 
Of  things  forever  speaking. 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 
We  must  be  ever  seeking  ?  ^ 

But  the  dispute  goes  deeper  than  mere  method. 
The  poet's  immediate  intuition  is  superior  to  the 
philosopher's  toilsome  research,  he  asserts,  because 
it  captures  ideality  alive,  whereas  the  philosopher 
can  only  kill  and  dissect  it.  As  Wordsworth  phrases 
it,  poetry  is  "the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  knowl- 
edge ;  the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in  the 
countenance  of  all  science."  Philosophy  is  useful 
to  the  poet  only  as  it  presents  facts  for  his  syn- 
thesis ;  Shelley  states,  "Reason  is  to  the  imagina- 
tion as  the  instrument  to  the  agent,  as  the  body  to 
the  spirit,  as  the  shadow  to  the  substance."  ^ 

To  this  the  philosopher  may  rejoin  that  poetry, 
far  from  making  discoveries  beyond  the  bourne  of 
philosophy,  is  a  mere  popularization,  a  sugar-coat- 
ing, of  the  philosopher's  discoveries.  Tolstoi  con- 
tends, 

True  science  investigates  and  brings  to  human  per- 
ception such  truths  and  such  knowledge  as  the  people 

^  To  William  Wordsworth. 
^Expostulation  and  Reply. 
'A  Defense  of  Poetry. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  307 

of  a  given  time  and  society  consider  most  important. 
Art  transmits  these  truths  from  the  region  of  perception 
to  the  region  of  emotion.  And  thus  a  false  activity  of 
science  inevitably  causes  a  correspondingly  false 
activity  of  art.^ 

Such  criticisms  have  sometimes  incensed  the  poet 
till  he  has  refused  to  acknowledge  any  indebtedness 
to  the  dissecting  hand  of  science,  and  has  pronounced 
the  philosopher's  attitude  of  mind  wholly  antago- 
nistic to  poetry. 

Philosophy  will  clip  an  angel's  wings, 
Conquer  all  mysteries  by  rule  and  line,^ 

Keats  once  complained.  "Sleep  in  your  intellectual 
crust  !"^  Wordsworth  contemptuously  advised 
the  philosopher,  and  not  a  few  other  poets  have 
felt  that  philosophy  deadens  life  as  a  crust  of  ice 
deadens  a  flowing  stream.  That  reason  kills  poetry 
is  the  unoriginal  theme  of  a  recent  poem.  The  poet 
scornfully  characterizes  present  writers. 

We  are  they  who  dream  no  dreams, 

Singers   of   a   rising  day, 

Who  undaunted, 

Where  the  sword  of  reason  gleams. 

Follow  hard,  to  hew  away 

The  woods  enchanted.* 

One  must  turn  to  Poe  for  the  clearest  statement 
of  the  antagonism.     He  declares, 

'  Wlwt  is  Art? 

'Lamia. 

'A  Poet's  Epitaph. 

*].  E.  Flecker,  Donde  Estan. 


3o8  The  Poet's  Poet 

Science,  true  daughter  of  Old  Time  thou  artl 

Who  alterest  all  things  with  thy  peering  eyes, 

Why  preyest  thou  thus  upon  the  poet's  heart, 

Vulture,  whose  wings  are  dull  realities? 

How  should  he  love  thee?     Or  how  deem  thee  wise. 

Who  wouldst  not  leave  him  in  his  wandering 

To  seek  for  treasure  in  the  jewelled  skies, 

Albeit  he  soared  with  an  undaunted  wing? 

Hast  thou  not  dragged  Diana  from  her  car, 

And  driven  the  Hamadryad  from  the  wood 

To  seek  for  shelter  in  some  happier  star? 

Hast  thou  not  torn  the  Naiad  from  her  flood, 

The  Elfin  from  the  green  grass,  and  from  me 

The  summer  dream  beneath  the  tamarund  tree  ?  ^ 

If  this  sort  of  complaint  is  characteristic  of  poets, 
how  shall  the  philosopher  refrain  from  charging 
them  with  falsehood?  The  poet's  hamadryad  and 
naiad,  what  are  they,  indeed,  but  cobwebby  fictions, 
which  must  be  brushed  away  if  ideal  truth  is  to  be 
revealed?  Critics  of  the  poet  like  to  point  out 
that  Shakespeare  frankly  confessed, 

Most  true  it  is  that  I  have  looked  on  truth 
Askance  and  strangely, 

and  that  a  renegade  artist  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury admitted,  "Lying,  the  telling  of  beautiful  un- 
true things,  is  the  proper  aim  of  Art."  -     If  poets 

complain  that 

all  charms  fly 
At  the  mere  touch  of  cold  philosophy,^ 

'  To  Science. 

^  Oscar  Wilde,  The  Decay  of  Lying. 

'  Lamia. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  309 

are  they  not  admitting  that  their  vaunted  revela- 
tions are  mere  ghosts  of  distorted  facts,  and  that 
they  themselves  are  merely  accomplished  liars? 

In  his  rebuttal  the  poet  makes  a  good  case  for 
himself.  He  has  identified  the  philosopher  with 
the  scientist,  he  says,  and  rightly,  for  the  philoso- 
pher, the  seeker  for  truth  alone,  can  never  get 
beyond  the  realm  of  science.  His  quest  of  absolute 
truth  will  lead  him,  first,  to  the  delusive  rigidity  of 
scientific  classification,  then,  as  he  tries  to  make  his 
classification  complete,  it  will  topple  over  like  a  lofty 
tower  of  child's  blocks,  into  the  original  chaos  of 
things. 

What !  the  philosopher  may  retort,  the  poet  speaks 
thus  of  truth,  who  has  just  exalted  himself  as  the 
supreme  truth-teller,  the  seer?  But  the  poet  an- 
swers that  his  truth  is  not  in  any  sense  identical 
with  that  of  the  scientist  and  the  philosopher.  Not 
everything  that  exists  is  true  for  the  poet,  but  only 
that  which  has  beauty.  Therefore  he  has  no  need 
laboriously  to  work  out  a  scientific  method  for  sift- 
ing facts.  If  his  love  of  the  beautiful  is  satisfied  by 
a  thing,  that  thing  is  real.  "Beauty  is  truth,  truth 
beauty" ;  Keats'  words  have  been  echoed  and  re- 
echoed by  poets. ^     If  Poe's  rejection  of 

The  loftiest  star  of  unascended  heaven, 
Pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense  inane, 

'  A  few  examples  of  poems  dealing  with  this  subject  are 
Shelley,  A  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty;  Mrs.  Browning.  Pan 
Is  Dead;  Henry  Timrod,  A  Vision  of  Poesy;  Madison  Cawein, 
Prototypes. 


3IO  The  Poet's  Poet 

in  favor  of  attainable  "treasures  of  the  jewelled 
skies"  be  an  offense  against  truth,  it  is  not,  poets 
would  say,  because  of  his  non-conformance  to  the 
so-called  facts  of  astronomy,  but  because  his  sense 
of  beauty  is  at  fault,  leading  him  to  prefer  pretti- 
ness  to  sviblimity.  As  for  the  poet's  visions,  of  naiad 
and  dryad,  which  the  philosopher  avers  are  less 
true  than  chemical  and  physical  forces,  they  repre- 
sent the  hidden  truth  of  beauty,  which  is  threaded 
through  the  ugly  medley  of  life,  being  invisible 
till  under  the  light  of  the  poet's  thought  it  flashes 
out  like  a  pattern  in  golden  thread,  woven  through 
a  somber  tapestry. 

It  is  only  when  the  poet  is  not  keenly  alive  to 
beauty  that  he  begins  to  fret  about  making  an 
artificial  connection  between  truth  and  beauty,  or, 
as  he  is  apt  to  rename  them,  between  wisdom  and 
fancy.  In  the  eighteenth  century  when  the  poet's 
vision  of  truth  became  one  with  the  scientist's,  he 
could  not  conceive  of  beauty  otherwise  than  as 
gaudy  ornaments,  "fancies,"  with  which  he  might 
trim  up  his  thoughts.  The  befuddled  conception 
lasted  over  into  the  romantic  period ;  Beattie  ^  and 
Bowles  ^  both  warned  their  poets  to  include  both 
fancy  and  wisdom  in  their  poetry.  Even  Landor 
reflected, 

A  marsh,  where  only  flat  leaves  lie, 
And  showing  but  the  broken  sky 


'  See  The  Minstrel. 

*  See  The  Visionary  Boy. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  311 

Too  surely  is  the  sweetest  lay 
That  wins  the  ear  and  wastes  the  day 
Where  youthful  Fancy  pouts  alone 
And  lets  not  wisdom  touch  her   zone.^ 

But  the  poet  whose  sense  of  beauty  is  unerring  gives 
no  heed  to  such  distinctions. 

If  the  scientist  scoffs  at  the  poet's  intuitive  selec- 
tion of  ideal  values,  declaring  that  he  might  just 
as  well  take  any  other  aspect  of  things — their  num- 
ber, solidarity,  edibleness — instead  of  beauty,  for 
his  test  of  their  reality,  the  poet  has  his  answer 
ready.  After  all,  this  poet,  this  dreamer,  is  a  prag- 
matist  at  heart.  To  the  scientist's  charge  that  his 
test  is  absurd,  his  answer  is  simply.  It  works. 

The  world  is  coming  to  acknowledge,  little  by 
little,  the  poet  points  out,  that  whatever  he  pre- 
sents to  it  as  beauty  is  likewise  truth.  "The  poet's 
wish  is  nature's  law,"  -  says  Sidney  Lanier,  and 
other  poets,  no  less,  assert  that  the  poet  is  in  unison 
with  nature.  Wordsworth  calls  poetry  "a  force, 
like  one  of  nature's."  ^  One  of  Oscar  Wilde's 
cleverest  paradoxes  is  to  the  effect  that  nature  imi- 
tates art,*  and  in  so  far  as  nature  is  one  with  human 
perception,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  true.  "What 
the  imagination  seizes  as  beauty  must  be  truth," 
Keats  wrote,  "whether  it  existed  before  or  not."  ° 


^  See  To  Wordsworth. 

^  Poem   Outlines. 

"  The  Prelude. 

*  See   the   Essay  on   Criticism. 

'Letter  to  B.  Baillie,  November  17,  1817. 


312  The  Poet's  Poet 

And  again,  "The  imagination  may  be  compared  to 
Adam's  dream — he  awoke  and  found  it  truth."  ^ 

If  the  poet's  intuitions  are  false,  how  does  it 
chance,  he  inquires,  that  he  has  been  known,  in  all 
periods  of  the  world's  history,  as  a  prophet?  Shel- 
ley says,  "Poets  are  .  .  .  the  mirrors  of  the  gigan- 
tic shadows  which  futurity  casts  upon  the  present," 
and  explains  the  phenomenon  thus :  "A  poet  par- 
ticipates in  the  eternal,  the  infinite,  the  one;  so  far 
as  related  to  his  conceptions,  time  and  place  and 
number  are  not."  -  In  our  period,  verse  dealing 
with  the  Scotch  bard  is  fondest  of  stressing  the  im- 
memorial association  of  the  poet  and  the  prophet, 
and  in  much  of  this,  the  "pretense  of  superstition" 
as  Shelley  calls  it,  is  kept  up,  that  the  poet  can  fore- 
tell specific  happenings."  But  we  have  many  poems 
that  express  a  broader  conception  of  the  poet's  gift 
of  prophecy.*    Holmes'  view  is  typical : 

We  call  those  poets  who  are  first  to  mark 

Through  earth's  dull  mist  the  coming  of  the  dawn, — 

Who  see  in  twilight's  gloom  the  first  pale  spark 

^  Letter  to  B.  Baillie,  November  17,  1817. 

'A  Defense  of  Poetry. 

'  See,  for  example,  Gray,  The  Bard;  Scott,  The  Lady  of  the 
Lake,  The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  Thomas  the  Rhymer; 
Campbell,  Lochiel's  Warning. 

■*  See  VVilliam  Blake,  Introduction  to  Songs  of  Experience, 
Hear  the  Voice  of  the  Bard;  Crabbe,  The  Candidate;  Landor, 
Dante;  Barry  Cornwall,  The  Prophet;  Alexander  Smith,  A 
Life  Dratna;  Coventry  Patmore,  Prophets  Who  Cannot  Sing; 
J.  R.  Lowell,  Massaccio,  Sonnet  XVIII ;  Owen  Meredith,  The 
Prophet;  W.  H.  Burleigh,  Shelley;  O.  W.  Holmes,  Shake- 
speare; T.  H.  Chivers,  The  Poet,  Dante;  Alfred  Austin,  The 
Poet's  Corner;  Swinburne,  The  Statue  of  Victor  Hugo;  Her- 
bert Trench,  Stanzas  on  Poetry. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  313 

While  others  only  note  that  day  is  gone; 
For  them  the  Lord  of  light  the  curtain  rent 
That  veils  the  firmament.^ 

Most  of  these  poems  account  for  the  premonitions  of 
the  poet  as  Shelley  does;  as  a  more  recent  poet  has 

phrased  it : 

Strange  hints 
Of  things  past,  present  and  to  come  there  lie 
Sealed  in  the  magic  pages  of  that  music, 
Which,   laying  hold  on   universal   laws, 
Ranges  beyond  these  mud-walls  of  the  flesh.^ 

The  poet's  defense  is  not  finished  when  he  estab- 
lishes the  truth  of  his  vision.  How  shall  the  world 
be  served,  he  is  challenged,  even  though  it  be  true 
that  the  poet's  dreams  are  of  reality?  Plato  de- 
manded of  his  philosophers  that  they  return  to  the 
cave  of  sense,  after  they  had  seen  the  heavenly 
vision,  and  free  the  slaves  there.  Is  the  poet  will- 
ing to  do  this?  It  has  been  charged  that  he  is  not. 
Browning  muses, 

Ah,  but  to  find 

A  certain  mood  enervate  such  a  mind, 

Counsel  it  slumber  in  the  solitude 

Thus  reached,  nor,  stooping,  task  for  mankind's  good 

Its  nature  just,  as  life  and  time  accord. 

— Too  narrow  an  arena  to  reward 

Emprize — the  world's  occasion  worthless  since 

Not  absolutely  fitted  to  evince 

Its  mastery !  ^ 

^  Shakespeare. 

*  Alfred  Noyes,  Tales  of  the  Mermaid  Inn. 

*Sordello. 


314  The  Poet's  Poet 

But  one  is  inclined  to  question  the  justice  of  Brown- 
ing's charge,  at  least  so  far  as  it  applies  peculiarly 
to  the  poet.  Logically,  he  should  devote  himself 
to  sense-blinded  humanity,  not  reluctantly,  like  the 
philosopher  descending  to  a  gloomy  cave  which  is 
not  his  natural  habitat,  but  eagerly,  since  the  poet  is 
dependent  upon  sense  as  well  as  spirit  for  his 
vision.  "This  is  the  privilege  of  beauty,"  says  Plato, 
"that,  being  the  loveliest  of  the  ideas,  she  is  also 
the  most  palpable  to  sight."  ^  Accordingly  the  poet 
has  no  horror  of  physical  vision  as  a  bondage,  but 
he  is  fired  with  an  enthusiasm  to  make  the  world 
of  sense  a  more  transparent  medium  of  beauty.- 
It  is  inevitable  that  every  poet's  feeling  for  the 
world  should  be  that  of  Shelley,  who  says  to  the 
spirit  of  beauty, 

^  Phadriis. 

*  For  poetry  dealing  with  the  poet's  humanitarian  aspect, 
see  Bowles,  The  Visionary  Boy,  On  the  Death  of  the  Rev. 
Benwell;  Wordsworth,  The  Poet  and  the  Caged  Turtle  Dove; 
Arnold,  Heine's  Grave;  George  Eliot,  O  May  I  Join  the  Choir 
Invisible;  Lewis  Morris,  Food  Of  Song;  George  Meredith, 
Milton;  Bulwer  Lytton,  Milton;  James'  Thomson,  B.  V,, 
Shelley;  Swinburne,  Centenary  of  Landor,  Victor  Hugo,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  in  18/'/,  Ben  Jonson,  Thomas  Decker;  Whittier,  To 
J.  P.,  and  The  Tent  on  the  Beach;  J.  R.  Lowell,  To  the 
Memory  of  Hood;  O.  W.  Holmes,  At  a  Meeting  of  the  Burns 
Club;  Emerson,  Solution;  R.  Realf,  Of  Liberty  and  Charity; 
W.  H.  Burleigh,  Shelley;  T.  L.  Harris,  Lyrics  of  the  Golden 
Age;  Eugene  Field,  Poet  and  King;  C.  W.  Hubner,  The  Poet; 
J.  H.  West,  O  Story  Teller  Poet;  Gerald  Massey,  To  Hood 
Who  Sang  the  Song  of  the  Shirt ;  Bayard  Taylor,  A  Friend's 
Greeting  to  Whittier;  Sidney  Lanier,  Wagner,  Clover;  C. 
A.  Pierce,  The  Poet's  Ideal;  E.  Markham,  The  Bard,  A  Com- 
rade Calling  Back,  An  April  Greeting ;  G.  L.  Raymond,  A  Life 
in  Song;  Richard  Gilder,  The  City,  The  Dead  Poet;  E.  L. 
Cox,  The  Master,  Overture;  R.  C.  Robbins,  Wordsworth; 
Carl  McDonald,  A  Poet's  Epitaph. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  315 

Never  joy  illumed  my  brow 

Unlinked  with  hope  that  thou  wouldst   free 

This  world  from  its  dark  slavery.^ 

For,  unlike  the  philosopher,  the  poet  has  never  de- 
parted from  the  world  of  sense,  and  it  is  hallowed 
to  him  as  the  incarnation  of  beauty.  Therefore  he 
is  eager  to  make  other  men  ever  more  and  more 
transparent  embodiments  of  their  true  selves,  in 
order  that,  gazing  upon  them,  the  poet  may  have 
ever  deeper  inspiration.  This  is  the  central  allegory 
in  Enydmion,  that  the  poet  must  learn  to  help  hu- 
manity before  the  mystery  of  poetship  shall  be  un- 
locked to  him.  Browning  comments  to  this  effect 
upon  Sordello's  unwillingness  to  meet  the  world: 

But  all  is  changed  the  moment  you  descry 
Mankind  as  half  yourself. 

Matthew  Arnold  is  the  sternest  of  modern  poets, 
perhaps,  in  pointing  out  the  poet's  responsibility 
to  humanity : 

The  poet,  to  whose  mighty  heart 
Heaven  doth  a  quicker  pulse  impart, 
Subdues  that  energy  to  scan 
Not  his  own  course,  but  that  of  man. 
Though  he  move  mountains,  though  his  day 
Be  passed  on  the  proud  heights  of  sway, 
Though  he  hath  loosed  a  thousand  chains, 
Though  he  hath  borne  immortal  pains, 
Action  and  suffering  though  he  know, 
He  hath  not  lived,  if  he  lives  so.^ 

*  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty. 

*  Resignation. 


3i6  The  Poet's  Poet 

It  is  obvious  that  in  the  poet's  opinion  there  is 
only  one  means  by  which  he  can  help  humanity,  and 
that  is  by  helping  men   to   express  their  essential 
natures ;  in  other  words,  by  setting  them  free.     Lib- 
erty is  peculiarly  the  watch-word  of  the  poets.     To 
the  philosopher  and  the  moralist,  on  the  contrary, 
there  is  no  merit  in  liberty  alone.     Men  must  be 
free  before  they  can  seek  wisdom  or  goodness,  no 
doubt,  but  something  beside  freedom  is  needed,  they 
feel,  to  make  men  good  or  evil.     But  to  the  poet, 
beauty    and    liberty    are    almost    synonymous.      If 
beauty  is  the  heart  of  the  universe  (and  it  must  be, 
the  poet  argues,  since  it  abides  in  sense  as  well  as 
spirit),  there  is  no  place  for  the  corrupt  will.     If 
men  are  free,  they  are  expressing  their  real  natures ; 
they  are  beautiful. 

Is  this  our  poet's  view?  But  hear  Plato:  "The 
tragic  poets,  being  wise  men,  will  forgive  us,  and 
any  others  who  live  after  our  manner,  if  we  do  not 
receive  them  into  our  state,  because  they  are  the 
eulogists  of  tyranny."  ^  Few  enemies  of  poets 
nowadays  would  go  so  far  as  to  make  a  charge  like 
this  one,  though  Thomas  Peacock,  who  locked  horns 
with  Shelley  on  the  question  of  poetry,  asserted 
that  poets  exist  only  by  virtue  of  their  flattery  of 
earth's  potentates."  Once,  it  must  be  confessed,  one 
of  the  poets  themselves  brought  their  name  into  dis- 
repute.     In   the  heat  of   his   indignation  over   at- 

^  Republic. 

'  See  The  Four  Ages  of  Poetry. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  317 

tacks  made  upon  his  friend  Southey,  Landor  was 
moved  to  exclaim, 

If  thou  hast  ever  done  amiss 

It  was,  O  Southey,  but  in  this, 

That,  to  redeem  the  lost  estate 

Of  the  poor  Muse,  a  man  so  great 

Abased  his  laurels  where  some  Georges  stood 

Knee-deep  in  sludge  and  ordure,  some  in  blood. 

Was  ever  genius  but  thyself 

Friend  or  befriended  of  a  Guelf? 

But  these  are  insignificant  exceptions  to  the  general 
characterization  of  the  modem  poet  as  liberty-lover. 

Probably  Plato's  equanimity  would  not  be  upset, 
even  though  we  presented  to  him  an  overwhelming 
array  of  evidence  bearing  upon  the  modern  poet's  al- 
legiance to  democracy.  Certainly,  he  might  say,  the 
modern  poet,  like  the  ancient  one,  reflects  the  life 
about  him.  At  the  time  of  the  French  revolution, 
or  of  the  world  war,  when  there  is  a  popular  outcry 
against  oppression,  what  is  more  likely  than  that 
the  poet's  voice  should  be  the  loudest  in  the  throng? 
But  as  soon  as  there  is  a  reaction  toward  monarchical 
government,  poets  will  again  scramble  for  the  post 
of  poet-laureate. 

The  modern  poet  can  only  repeat  that  this  is  false, 
and  that  a  resume  of  history  proves  it.  Shelley 
traces  the  rise  and  decadence  of  poetry  during  periods 
of  freedom  and  slavery.  He  points  out,  "The  period 
in  our  history  of  the  grossest  degradation  of  the 
drama  is  the  reign  of  Charles  II,  when  all  the  forms 
in  which  poetry  had  been  accustomed  to  be  expressed 


3i8  The  Poet's  Poet 

became  hymns  to  the  triumph  of  kingly  power  over 
Hberty  and  virtue."  Gray,  in  The  Progress  of  Poesy, 
draws  the  same  conclusion  as  Shelley : 

Her  track,  where'er  the  goddess  roves, 

Glory  pursue,  and  generous  shame. 

The  unconquerable  will,  and  freedom's  holy  flame. 

Other  poets,  if  they  do  not  base  their  conclusions 
upon  history,  assert  no  less  positively  that  every 
true  poet  is  a  lover  of  freedom.-^  It  is  to  be  ex- 
pected that  in  the  romantic  period  poets  should  be 
almost  unanimous  in  this  view,  though  even  here 

^  See  Gray,  The  Bard;  Burns,  The  Vision;  Scott,  The  Bard's 
Incantation;  Moore,  The  Minstrel  Boy,  O  Blame  Not  the 
Bard,  The  Harp  That  Once  Through  Tara's  Halls,  Shall  the 
Harp  then  be  Silent,  Dear  Harp  of  My  Country;  Words- 
worth, The  Brownies'  Cell,  Here  Pause;  Tennyson,  Epilogue, 
The  Poet;  Swinburne,  Victor  Hugo,  The  Centenary  of  Lan- 
dor.  To  Catullus,  The  Statue  of  Victor  Hugo,  To  Walt  Whit- 
man in  America;  Browning,  Sordello;  Barry  Cornwall, 
Miriam;  Shelley,  To  Wordsworth,  Alastor,  The  Revolt  of 
Islam,  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty,  Prometheus  Unbound; 
S.  T.  Coleridge,  Ode  to  France ;  Keats,  Epistle  to  His  Brother 
George;  Philip  Freneau,  To  a  Writer  Who  Inscribes  Himself 
a  Foe  to  Tyrants;  J.  D.  Percival,  The  Harper ;  J.  R.  Lowell, 
Ode,  L'Envoi,  Sonnet  XVII,  Incident  in  a  Railway  Car,  To 
the  Memory  of  Hood;  Whittier,  Proem,  Eliot,  Introduction 
to  The  Tent  on  the  Beach;  Longfellow,  Michael  Angela; 
Whitman,  Starting  from  Pautnaak,  By  Blue  Ontario's  Shore, 
For  You,  O  Democracy;  W.  H.  Burleigh,  The  Poet;  W.  C. 
Bryant,  The  Poet;  Bayard  Taylor,  A  Friend's  Greeting  to 
Whittier;  Richard  Realf,  Of  Liberty  and  Charity;  Henry  van 
Dyke,  Victor  Hugo,  To  R.  W.  Gilder;  Simon  Kerl,  Burns; 
G.  L.  Raymond,  Dante,  A  Life  in  Song;  Charles  Kent,  Lamar- 
tin£  in  February;  Robert  Underwood  Johnson,  To  the  Spirit 
of  Byron,  Shakespeare ;  Francis  Carlin,  The  Dublin  Poets, 
MacSweeney  the  Rhymer,  The  Poetical  Saints;  Daniel  Hen- 
derson, Joyce  Kilmer,  Alan  Seeger,  Walt  Whitman;  Rhys 
Carpenter,  To  Rupert  Brooke;  William  Ellery  Leonard,  As 
I  Listened  by  the  Lilacs;  Eden  Phillpotts,  Swinburne,  The 
Grave  of  Landor. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  319 

it  is  something  of  a  surprise  to  hear  Keats,  whose 
themes  are  usually  so  far  removed  from  political 
life,  exclaiming, 

Where's  the  poet  ?    Show  him,  show  him, 

Muses  mine,  that  I  may  know  him! 

'Tis  the  man  w'ho  with  a  man 

Is  an  equal,  be  he  king 

Or  poorest  of  the  beggar  clan.^ 

Wordsworth's  devotion  to  liberty  was  doubted  by 
some  of  his  brothers,  but  Wordsworth  himself  felt 
that,  if  he  were  not  a  democrat,  he  would  be  false 
to  poetry,  and  he  answers  his  detractors, 

Here  pause:  the  poet  claims  at  least  this  praise, 
That  virtuous  Liberty  hath  been  the  scope 
Of  his  pure  song. 

In  the  Victorian  period  the  same  view  holds.  The 
Brownings  were  ardent  champions  of  democracy. 
Mrs.  Browning  averred  that  the  poet's  thirst  for 
ubiquitous  beauty  accounts  for  his  love  of  freedom : 

Poets  (hear  the  word) 
Half-poets  even,  are   still   whole  democrats. 
Oh,  not  that  they're  disloyal  to  the  high, 
But  loyal  to  the  low.  and  cognizant 
Of  the  less  scrutable  majesties.^ 

Tennyson  conceived  of  the  poet  as  the  author  of  de- 
mocracy.^   Swinburne  prolonged  the  Victorian  pcxan 

*  The  Poet. 

*  Aurora  Leigh. 
•See  The  Poet. 


320  The  Poet's  Poet 

to  the  liberty-loving  poet  ^  till  our  new  group  of 
singers  appeared,  whose  devotion  to  liberty  is  self- 
evident. 

It  is  true  that  to  the  poet  liberty  is  an  inner  thing, 
not  always  synonymous  with  suffrage.  Coleridge, 
Southey,  Wordsworth,  all  came  to  distrust  the  ma- 
chinery of  so-called  freedom  in  society.  Likewise 
Browning  was  not  in  favor  of  too  radical  social 
changes,  and  Mrs.  Browning  went  so  far  as  to  de- 
clare, 'T  love  liberty  so  much  that  I  hate  socialism." 
Mob  rule  is  as  distasteful  to  the  deeply  thoughtful 
poet  as  is  tyranny,  for  the  liberty  which  he  seeks 
to  bring  into  the  world  is  simply  the  condition  in 
which  every  man  is  expressing  the  beauty  of  his 
truest  self. 

If  the  poet  has  proved  that  his  visions  are  true, 
and  that  he  is  eager  to  bring  society  into  harmony 
with  them,  what  further  charge  remains  against 
him?  That  he  is  "an  ineffectual  angel,  beating  his 
bright  wings  in  the  void."  He  may  see  a  vision  of 
Utopia,  and  long  that  men  shall  become  citizens 
there,  but  the  man  who  actually  perfects  human  so- 
ciety is  he  who  patiently  toils  at  the  "dim,  vulgar, 
vast,  unobvious  work"  ^  of  the  world,  here  amend- 
ing a  law,  here  building  a  settlement  house,  and  so 
on.  Thus  the  reformer  charges  the  poet.  Mrs. 
Browning,  in  Aurora  Leigh,  makes  much  of  the 
issue,  and  there  the  socialist,  Romney  Leigh,  sneers 

^  See    Mater    Triumphilis,    Prelude,    Epilogue,    Litany    of 
Nations,  and  Hertha. 
'  See  Sordello. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  321 

at   the   poet's   inefficiency,   telling   Aurora   that   the 

world 

Forgets 
To  rhyme  the  cry  with  which  she  still  beats  back 
Those  savage  hungry  dogs  that  hunt  her  down 
To  the  empty  grave  of  Christ  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Who  has  time, 
An  hour's  time — think  ! — to  sit  upon  a  bank 
And  hear  the  cymbal  tinkle  in  white  hands.^ 

The  poet  has,  occasionally,  plunged  into  the  mael- 
strom of  reform  and  proved  to  such  objectors  that 
he  can  work  as  efficiently  as  they.  Thomas  Hood, 
Whittier,  and  other  poets  have  challenged  the  re- 
spect of  the  Romney  Leighs  of  the  world.  Yet  one 
hesitates  to  make  specialization  in  reform  the  gauge 
of  a  poet's  merit.  Where,  in  that  case,  would  Keats 
be  beside  Hood?  In  our  day,  where  would  Sara 
Teasdale  be  beside  Edwin  Markham?  Is  there  not 
danger  that  the  poet,  once  launched  on  a  career 
as  an  agitator,  will  no  longer  have  time  to  dream 
dreams?  If  he  bases  his  claims  of  worth  on  his 
ability  as  a  "carpet-duster,"  -  as  Mrs.  Browning  calls 
the  agitator,  he  is  merely  unsettling  society, — for 
what  end?  He  himself  will  soon  have  forgotten — 
will  have  become  as  salt  that  has  lost  its  savor. 
Nothing  is  more  disheartening  than  to  see  men 
straining  every  nerv^e  to  make  other  men  righteous, 
who  have  themselves  not  the  faintest  appreciation 

*  Aurora  Leigh.     See  also  the   letter  to   Robert   Browning, 
February  17,  1845. 
'  See  Aurora  Leigh. 


322  The  Poet's  Poet 

of  the  beauty  of  holiness.  Let  reformers  beware 
how  they  assert  the  poet's  uselessness,  our  singers 
say,  for  it  is  an  indication  that  they  themselves  are 
blind  to  the  light  toward  which  they  profess  to  be 
leading  men.  The  work  of  the  reformer  inevitably 
degenerates  into  the  mere  strenuosity  of  the  cam- 
paign, 

Unless  the  artist  keep  up  open  roads 
Betwixt  the  seen  and  unseen,  bursting  through 
The  best  of  our  conventions  with  his  best, 
The  speakable,  imaginable  best 
God  bids  him  speak,  to  prove  what  lies  beyond 
Both  speech  and  imagination.^ 

Thus  speaks  Mrs.  Browning. 

The  reforms  that  make  a  stir  in  the  world,  being 
merely  external,  mean  little  or  nothing  apart  from 
the  impulse  that  started  them,  and  the  poet  alone 
is  powerful  to  stir  the  impulse  of  reform  in  human- 
ity. "To  be  persuaded  rests  usually  with  ourselves," 
said  Longinus,  "but  genius  brings  force  sovereign 
and  irresistible  to  bear  upon  every  hearer."  -  The 
poet,  in  ideal  mood,  is  as  innocent  of  specific  de- 
signs upon  current  morality  as  was  Pippa,  when 
she  wandered  about  the  streets  of  Asolo,  but  the 
power  of  his  songs  is  ever  as  insuperable  as  was 
that  of  hers.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  Emerson 
advises  the  poet  to  leave  hospital  building  and  statute 
revision  for  men  of  duller  sight  than  he : 


^Aurora  Leigh. 
*  On  the  Sublime. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  323 

Oft  shall  war  end  and  peace  return 
And  cities  rise  where  cities  burn 
Ere  one  man  my  hill  shall  climb 
Who  can  turn  the  golden  rhyme. 
Let  them  manage  how  they  may, 
Heed  thou  only  Saadi's  lay.^ 

Here  the  philosopher  may  demur.  If  the  poet 
were  truly  an  idealist, — if  he  found  for  the  world 
conceptions  as  pure  as  those  of  mathematics,  which 
can  be  applied  equally  well  to  any  situation,  then,  in- 
deed, he  might  regard  himself  as  the  author  of  prog- 
ress. But  it  is  the  poet's  failing  that  he  gives  men 
no  vision  of  abstract  beauty.  He  represents  his 
visions  in  the  contemporary  dress  of  his  times.  Thus 
he  idealizes  the  past  and  the  present,  showing  beauty 
shining  through  the  dullness  and  error  of  human 
history.  Is  he  not,  then,  the  enemy  of  progress, 
since  he  will  lead  his  readers  to  imagine  that  things 
are  ideal  as  they  are? 

Rather,  men  will  be  filled  with  reverence  for  the 
idealized  portrait  of  themselves  that  the  poet  has 
drawn,  and  the  intervention  of  the  reformer  will  be 
unnecessary,  since  they  will  voluntarily  tear  off  the 
shackles  that  disfigure  them.  The  poet,  said  Shel- 
ley, "redeems  from  decay  the  visitations  of  the 
divinity  in  man."  Emerson  said  of  Wordsworth, 
"He  more  than  any  other  man  has  done  justice  to 
the  divine  in  us."  Mrs.  Browning  said  (of  Car- 
lyle)  "He  fills  the  office  of  a  poet — by  analyzing  hu- 
manity back   into   its   elements,   to   the   destruction 

*  Saadi. 


324  The  Poet's  Poet 

of  the  conventions  of  the  hour."  ^  This  is  what 
Matthew  Arnold  meant  by  calHng  poetry  "a  criticism 
of  Hfe."  Poetry  is  captivating  only  in  proportion 
as  the  ideal  shines  through  the  sensual ;  consequently 
men  who  are  charmed  by  the  beauty  incarnate  in 
poetry,  ar€  moved  to  discard  all  conventions  through 
which  beauty  does  not  shine. 

Therefore,  the  poet  repeats,  he  is  the  true  author 
of  reform.     Tennyson  says  of  freedom. 

No  sword 
Of  wrath  her  right  arm  whirled, 
But  one  poor  poet's  scroll,  and  with  his  word 
She  shook  the  world.^ 

This  brings  us  back  to  our  war  poets  who  have 
so  recently  died.  Did  they  indeed  disparage  the 
Muse  whom  they  deserted?  Did  they  not  rather 
die  to  fulfill  a  poet's  prophesy  of  freedom?  A  poet 
who  did  not  carry  in  his  heart  the  courage  of  his 
song — what  could  be  more  discreditable  to  poetry 
than  that?  The  soldier-poets  were  like  a  general 
who  rushes  into  the  thick  of  the  fight  and  dies  beside 
a  private.  We  reverence  such  a  man,  but  we  rea- 
lize that  it  was  not  his  death,  but  his  plan  for  the 
engagement,  that  saved  the  day. 

If  such  is  the  poet's  conception  of  his  service  to 
mankind,  what  is  his  reward?  The  government  of 
society,  he  returns.     Emerson  says, 

^  Letter  to  Robert  Browning,  February  2"],  1845. 
*  The  Poet. 


The  Pragmatic  Issue  325 

The  gods  talk  in  the  breath  of  the  woods, 

They  talk  in  the  shaken  pine, 

And  fill  the  long  reach  of  the  old  seashore 

With  dialogue  divine. 

And  the  poet  who  overhears 

Some  random  word  they  say 

Is  the  fated  man  of  men 

Whom  the  nations  must  obey.^ 

What  is  the  poet's  rev^^ard?     Immortality.     He 
is  confident  that  if  his  vision  is  true  he  shall  join 

The  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence :  live 
In  pulses  stirred  to  generosity, 

In  thoughts  sublime  that  pierce  the  night  like  stars, 
And  with  their  mild  persistence  urge  man's  search 
To  vaster  issues.^ 

Does  this  mean  simply  the  immortality  of  fame? 
It  is  a  higher  thing  than  that.  The  beauty  which 
the  poet  creates  is  itself  creative,  and  having  the 
principle  of  life  in  it,  can  never  perish.  Whitman 
cries, 

Poets  to  come !  orators,  singers,  musicians  to  come ! 
^ot  today  is  to  justify  me  and  answer  what  I  am  for, 
But  you,   a   new  brood,   native,   athletic,   continental, 

greater  than  before  known, 
Arouse!  for  you  must  justify  me!^ 


*  Fragment  on  The  Poet. 

'  George  Eliot,  The  Choir  Invisible. 

'Poets  to  Coim. 


326  The  Poet's  Poet 

Browning  made  the  only  apparent  trace  of  Sordello 
left  in  the  world,  the  snatch  of  song  which  the  peas- 
ants sing  on  the  hillside.  Yet,  though  his  name 
be  lost,  the  poet's  immortality  is  sure.  For  like 
Socrates  in  the  Symposium,  his  desire  is  not  merely 
for  a  fleeting  vision  of  beauty,  but  for  birth  and 
generation  in  beauty.  And  the  beauty  which  he  is 
enabled  to  bring  into  the  world  will  never  cease  to 
propagate  itself.  So,  though  he  be  as  fragile  as  a 
windflower,  he  may  assure  himself, 

I  shall  not  die;  I  shall  not  utterly  die, 
For  beauty  born  of  beauty — that  remains.^ 

*  Madison  Cawein,  To  a  Windflower. 


VIII 

A  SOBER  AFTERTHOUGHT 

^VJ  OT  even  a  paper  shortage  has  been  potent  to 
^  ^  give  the  lie  to  the  author  of  Ecclesiastes,  but 
it  has  fanned  into  flame  the  long  smouldering  re- 
sentment of  those  who  are  wearily  conscious  that  of 
making  many  books  there  is  no  end.  No  longer  is 
any  but  the  most  confirmed  writer  suffered  to  spin 
out  volume  after  volume  in  complacent  ignorance  of 
his  readers'  state  of  mind,  for  these  victims  of  eye- 
strain and  nerves  turn  upon  the  newest  book,  the 
metaphorical  last  straw  on  the  camel's  load,  with  the 
exasperated  cry,  Why?     Why?  and  again  Why? 

Fortunately  for  themselves,  most  of  the  poets 
who  have  taken  the  poet's  character  as  their  theme, 
indulged  their  weakness  for  words  before  that  long- 
suffering  bookworm,  the  reader,  had  turned,  but 
one  who  at  the  present  day  drags  from  cobwebby 
corners  the  accusive  mass  of  material  on  the  sub- 
ject, must  seek  to  justify,  not  merely  the  loquacity 
of  its  authors,  but  one's  own  temerity  as  well,  in 
forcing  it  a  second  time  upon  the  jaded  attention 
of  the  public. 

If  one  had  been  content  merely  to  make  an  an- 
thology of  poems  dealing  with  the  poet,  one's  deed 
would  perhaps  have  been  easier  to  excuse,  for  the 

327 


328  The  Poet's  Poet 

public  has  been  so  often  assured  that  anthologies 
are  an  economical  form  of  publication,  and  a  time- 
saving  form  of  predigested  food,  that  it  usually  does 
not  stop  to  consider  whether  the  material  was  worth 
collecting  in  the  first  place.  Gleaner  after  gleaner 
has  worked  in  the  field  of  English  literature,  sort- 
ing and  sifting,  until  almost  the  last  grain,  husk, 
straw  and  thistle  have  been  gathered  and  stored  with 
their  kind.  But  instead  of  making  an  anthology,  we 
have  gone  on  the  assumption  that  something  more 
than  accidental  identity  of  subject-matter  holds  to- 
gether the  apparently  desultory  remarks  of  poets  on 
the  subject  of  the  poet's  eyebrows,  his  taste  in 
liquors,  his  addiction  to  midnight  rambles,  and  what- 
not. We  have  followed  a  labyrinthine  path  through 
the  subject  with  faith  that,  if  we  were  but  patient 
in  observing  the  clues,  we  should  finally  emerge  at 
a  point  of  vantage  on  the  other  side  of  the  woods. 

The  primary  grounds  of  this  faith  may  have  ap- 
peared to  the  skeptic  ridiculously  inadequate.  Our 
faith  was  based  upon  the  fact  that,  more  than  two 
thousand  years  ago,  a  serious  accusation  had  been 
made  against  poets,  against  which  they  had  been 
challenged  to  defend  themselves.  This  led  us  to 
conclude  that  there  must  be  unity  of  intention  in 
poetry  dealing  with  the  poet,  for  we  believed  that 
when  English  poets  talked  of  themselves  and  their 
craft,  they  were  attempting  to  remove  the  stigma 
placed  upon  the  name  of  poet  by  Plato's  charge. 

Now  it  is  easy  for  a  doubter  to  object  that  many 
of  the  poems  on  the  subject  show  the  poet,  not  ar- 


A  Sober  Afterthought  329 

raying  evidence  for  a  trial,  but  leaning  over  the 
brink  of  introspection  in  the  attitude  of  Narcissus. 
One  need  seek  no  farther  than  self-love,  it  may  be 
suggested,  to  find  the  motive  for  the  poet's  absorp- 
tion in  his  reflection.  Yet  it  is  incontrovertible 
that  the  self-infatuation  of  our  Narcissus  has  its 
origin  in  the  conviction  that  no  one  else  understands 
him,  and  that  this  conviction  is  founded  upon  a 
very  real  attitude  of  hostility  on  the  part  of  his 
companions.  The  lack  of  sympathy  between  the 
English  poet  and  the  public  is  so  notorious  that 
Edmund  Gosse  is  able  to  state  as  a  truism : 

While  in  France  poetry  has  been  accustomed  to 
reflect  the  general  tongue  of  the  people,  the  great  poets 
of  England  have  almost  always  had  to  struggle  against 
a  complete  dissonance  between  their  own  aims  and 
interests  and  those  of  the  nation.  The  result  has  been 
that  England,  the  most  inartistic  of  the  modern  races, 
has  produced  the  largest  number  of  exquisite  literary 
artists.^ 

Furthermore,  even  though  everyone  may  agree 
that  a  lurking  sense  of  hostile  criticism  is  back  of 
the  poet's  self-absorption,  another  ground  for  skep- 
ticism may  lie  in  our  assumption  that  Plato  is  the 
central  figure  in  the  opposition.  It  is  usually  with 
purpose  to  excite  the  envy  of  contemporary  ene- 
mies that  poets  call  attention  to  their  graces,  the 
student  may  discover.  Frequently  the  quarrels  lead- 
ing them  to  flaunt  their  personalities  in  their  verses 

*  French  Profiles,  p.  344. 


330  The  Poet's  Poet 

have  arisen  over  the  most  personal  and  ephemeral 
of  issues.  Indeed,  we  may  have  appeared  to  falsify 
in  classifying  their  enemies  under  general  heads, 
when  for  Christopher  North,  Judson,  Bel  fair,  Friend 
Naddo,  Richard  Bame,  we  substituted  faces  of  cipher 
foolishness,  abstractions  which  we  named  the  puri- 
tan, the  philosopher,  the  philistine.  Possibly  by  so 
doing  we  have  given  the  impression  that  poets  are 
beating  the  air  against  an  abstraction  when  they  are 
in  reality  delivering  thumping  blows  upon  the  body 
of  a  personal  enemy.  And  if  these  generalizations 
appear  indefensible,  still  more  misleading,  it  may  be 
urged,  is  an  attempt  to  represent  that  the  poet,  when 
he  takes  issue  with  this  and  that  opponent,  is  an- 
swering a  challenge  hidden  away  from  the  unstudi- 
ous  in  the  tenth  book  of  Plato's  Republic.  It  is 
doubtful  even  whether  a  number  of  our  poets  are 
aware  of  the  existence  of  Plato's  challenge,  and 
much  more  doubtful  whether  they  have  it  in  mind 
as  they  write. 

Second  thought  must  make  it  clear,  however, 
that  to  prove  ignorance  of  Plato's  accusation  on 
the  part  of  one  poet  and  another  does  not  at  all  im- 
pair the  possibility  that  it  is  his  accusation  which 
they  are  answering  So  multiple  are  the  threads 
of  influence  leading  from  the  Republic  through  suc- 
ceeding literatures  and  civilizations  that  it  is  unsafe 
to  assert,  offhand,  that  any  modern  expression  of 
hostility  to  poetry  may  not  be  traced,  by  a  patient 
untangler  of  evidence,  to  a  source  in  the  Republic. 
But  even  this  is  aside  from  the  point.     One  might 


A  Sober  Afterthought  331 

concede  that  the  wide-spread  modern  antagonism 
to  poetry  would  have  heen  the  same  if  Plato  had 
never  lived,  and  still  maintain  that  in  the  Republic 
is  expressed  for  all  time  whatever  in  anti-sesthetic 
criticism  is  worthy  of  a  serious  answer.  Whether 
poets  themselves  are  aware  of  it  or  not,  we  have  a 
right  to  assert  that  in  concerning  themselves  with 
the  character  of  the  ideal  poet,  they  are  responding 
to  Plato's  challenge. 

This  may  not  be  enough  to  justify  our  faith  that 
these  defensive  expositions  lead  us  anywhere.  Let 
us  agree  that  certain  poets  of  the  nineteenth  and 
twentieth  centuries  have  answered  Plato's  challenge. 
But  has  the  Poet  likewise  answered  it?  If  from  their 
independent  efforts  to  paint  the  ideal  poet  there  has 
emerged  a  portrait  as  sculpturally  clear  in  outline 
as  is  Plato's  portrait  of  the  ideal  philosopher,  we 
shall  perhaps  be  justified  in  saying,  Yes,  the  Poet, 
through  a  hundred  mouths,  has  spoken. 

Frankly,  the  composite  picture  which  we  have 
been  considering  has  not  sculptural  clarity.  To  the 
casual  observer  it  bears  less  resemblance  to  an  alto- 
relief  than  to  a  mosaic ;  no  sooner  do  distinct  pat- 
terns spring  out  of  myriad  details  than  they  shift 
under  the  onlooker's  eyes  to  a  totally  different  form. 
All  that  we  can  claim  for  the  picture  is  excellence 
as  a  piece  of  impressionism,  which  one  must  scan 
with  half-closed  eyes  at  a  calculated  distance,  if 
one  would  appreciate  its  central  conception. 

Apparently  readers  of  English  poetry  have  not 
taken  the  trouble  to  scan  it  with  such  care.     They 


332  The  Poet's  Poet 

may  excuse  their  indifference  by  declaring  that  an 
attempt  to  discover  a  common  aesthetic  principle  in 
a  collection  of  views  as  catholic  as  those  with  which 
we  have  dealt  is  as  absurd  as  an  attempt  to  discover 
philosophical  truth  by  taking  a  census  of  general 
opinion.  Still,  obvious  as  are  the  limitations  of  a 
popular  vote  in  determining  an  issue,  it  has  a  certain 
place  in  the  discovery  of  truth.  One  would  not  en- 
tirely despise  the  benefit  derived  from  a  general 
survey  of  philosophers'  convictions,  for  instance. 
Into  the  conclusions  of  each  philosopher,  even  of  the 
greatest,  there  are  bound  to  enter  certain  personal 
whimsicalities  of  thought,  which  it  is  profitable  to 
eliminate,  by  finding  the  common  elements  in  the 
thought  of  several  men.  If  the  quest  of  a  universal 
least  common  denominator  forces  one  to  give  up 
everything  that  is  of  significance  in  the  views  of 
philosophers,  there  is  profit,  at  least,  in  learning 
that  the  title  of  philosopher  does  not  carry  with  it 
a  guarantee  of  truth-telling.  On  the  other  hand  if 
we  find  universal  recognition  of  some  fundamental 
truth,  a  common  cogito  ergo  sum,  or  the  like,  ac- 
knowledged by  all  philosophers,  we  have  made  a 
discovery  as  satisfactory  in  its  way  as  is  acceptance 
of  the  complex  system  of  philosophy  offered  by  Plato 
or  Descartes.  There  seems  to  be  no  real  reason  why 
it  should  not  be  quite  as  worth  while  to  take  a 
similar  census  of  the  views  of  poets. 

After  hearkening  to  the  general  suffrage  of  poets 
on  the  question  of  the  poet's  character,  we  must 
bring  a  serious  charge  against  them  if  a  deafening 


A  Sober  Afterthought  333 

clamor  of  contradiction  reverberates  in  our  ears. 
In  such  a  case  their  claim  that  they  are  seers,  or 
masters  of  harmony,  can  be  worth  little.  The  un- 
biased listener  is  likely  to  assure  us  that  clamorous 
contradiction  is  precisely  what  the  aggregate  of 
poets'  speaking  amounts  to,  but  we  shall  be  slow 
to  acknowledge  as  much.  Have  we  been  merely  the 
dupe  of  pretty  phrasing  when  we  felt  ourselves  in- 
sured against  discord  by  the  testimony  of  Keats? 
Hear  him: 

How  many  bards  gild  the  lapses  of  time! 

•  •  «  « 

.  .  .  Often,  when  I  sit  me  down  to  rhyme. 
These  will  in  throngs  before  my  mind  intrude, 
But  no  confusion,  no  disturbance  rude 
Do  they  occasion;  'tis  a  pleasing  chime. 

However  incompatible  the  characteristics  of  the 
poets  celebrated  by  Wordsworth  and  by  Swinburne, 
by  Christina  Rossetti  and  by  Walt  Whitman  may 
have  seemed  in  immediate  juxtaposition,  we  have 
trusted  that  we  need  only  retire  to  a  position  where 
"distance  of  recognizance  bereaves"  their  individual 
voices,  in  order  to  detect  in  their  mingled  notes 
"pleasing  music,  and  not  wild  uproar." 

The  critic  who  condemns  as  wholly  discordant 
the  variant  notes  of  our  multitudinous  verse-writ- 
ers may  point  out  that  we  should  have  had  more 
right  to  expect  concord  if  we  had  shown  some  dis- 
cernment in  sifting  true  poets  from  false.  Those 
who  have  least  claim  to  the  title  of  poet  have  fre- 


334  The  Poet's  Poet 

quently  been  most  garrulous  in  voicing  their  con- 
victions. Moreover,  these  pseudo-poets  outnumber 
genuine  poets  one  hundred  to  one,  yet  no  one  in 
his  right  mind  would  contend  that  their  expressions 
of  opinion  represent  more  than  a  straw  vote,  if  they 
conflict  with  the  judgment  of  a  single  true  poet. 

Still,  our  propensity  for  listening  to  the  rank 
breath  of  the  multitude  is  not  wholly  indefensible. 
In  the  first  place  pseudo-poets  have  not  created  so 
much  discord  as  one  might  suppose.  A  lurking 
sense  of  their  own  worthlessness  has  made  them 
timid  of  utterance  except  as  they  echo  and  prolong 
a  note  that  has  been  struck  repeatedly  by  singers  of 
reputation.  This  echoing,  it  may  be  added,  has 
sometimes  been  effective  in  bringing  the  traditions 
of  his  craft  to  the  attention  of  a  young  singer  as 
yet  unaware  of  them.  Thus  Bowles  and  Chivers, 
neither  of  whom  has  very  strong  claim  to  the  title 
of  bard,  yet  were  in  a  measure  responsible  for  the 
minor  note  in  Coleridge's  and  Poe's  description  of 
the  typical  poet. 

Even  when  the  voices  of  spurious  bards  have 
failed  to  chime  with  the  others,  the  resulting  discord 
has  not  been  of  serious  moment,  A  counterfeit 
coin  may  be  as  good  a  touchstone  for  the  detection 
of  pure  silver,  as  is  pure  silver  for  the  detection  of 
counterfeit.  Not  only  are  a  reader's  views  fre- 
quently clarified  by  setting  a  poetaster  beside  a  poet 
as  a  foil,  but  poets  themselves  have  clarified  their 
views  because  they  have  been  incited  by  declara- 
tions in  false  verse  to  express  their  convictions  more 


A  Sober  Afterthought  335 

unreservedly  than  they  should  otherwise  have  done. 
Pseudo-poets  have  sometimes  been  of  genuine  bene- 
fit by  their  exaggeration  of  some  false  note  which 
they  have  adopted  from  poetry  of  the  past.  No 
sooner  do  they  exaggerate  such  a  note,  than  a  con- 
certed shout  of  protest  from  true  poets  drowns  the 
erroneous  statement,  and  corrects  the  misleading 
impression  which  careless  statements  in  earlier  verse 
might  have  left  with  us.  Thus  the  morbid  singer 
exhibi^ted  in  minor  American  verse  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, and  the  vicious  singer  lauded  in  one  strain 
of  English  verse,  performed  a  genuine  service  by 
calling  forth  repudiation,  by  major  poets,  of  traits 
which  might  easily  lead  a  singer  in  the  direction  of 
morbidity  and  vice. 

The  confusion  of  sound  which  our  critic  com- 
plains of  is  not  to  be  remedied  merely  by  silencing 
the  chorus  of  echoic  voices.  If  we  dropped  from 
consideration  all  but  poets  of  unquestionable  merit, 
we  should  not  be  more  successful  in  detecting  a  sin- 
gle clear  note,  binding  all  their  voices  together. 
When  the  ideal  poet  of  Shelley  is  set  against  that 
of  Byron,  or  that  of  Matthew  Arnold  against  that 
of  Browning,  there  is  no  more  unison  than  when 
great  and  small  in  the  poetic  world  are  allowed  to 
speak  indiscriminately. 

Does  this  prove  that  only  the  supreme  poet  speaks 
truly,  and  that  we  must  hush  all  voices  but  his  if 
we  would  learn  what  is  the  essential  element  in 
the  poetic  character?  Then  we  are  indeed  in  a 
hard  case.    There  is  no  unanimity  of  opinion  among 


336  The  Poet's  Poet 

us  regarding  the  supreme  English  poet  of  the  last 
century,  and  if  we  dared  follow  personal  taste  in 
declaring  one  of  higher  altitude  than  all  the  others, 
only  a  small  percentage  of  readers  would  be  satis- 
fied when  we  set  up  the  Prelude  or  Adonais  or  Childe 
Harold  or  Sordello  beside  the  Republic  as  contain- 
ing the  one  portrait  of  the  ideal  singer  worthy  to 
stand  beside  the  portrait  of  the  ideal  philosopher. 
And  this  is  not  the  worst  of  the  difficulty.  Even  if  we 
turn  from  Shelley  to  Byron,  from  Wordsworth  to 
Browning,  in  quest  of  the  one  satisfactory  concep- 
tion of  the  poet,  we  shall  not  hear  in  anyone  of 
their  poems  the  single  clear  ringing  note  for  which 
we  are  listening.  When  anyone  of  these  men  is 
considering  the  poetic  character,  his  thought  be- 
haves like  a  pendulum,  swinging  back  and  forth 
between  two  poles. 

Thus  we  ourselves  have  admitted  the  futility  of 
our  quest  of  truth,  the  critic  may  conclude.  But 
no,  before  we  admit  as  much,  let  us  see  exactly  what 
constitutes  the  lack  of  unity  which  troubles  us.  Af- 
ter its  persistence  in  verse  of  the  same  country,  the 
same  period,  the  same  tradition,  the  same  poet,  even, 
has  led  us  to  the  brink  of  despair,  its  further  per- 
sistence rouses  in  us  fresh  hope,  or  at  least  intense 
curiosity,  for  what  impresses  us  as  the  swinging  of 
a  pendulum  keeps  up  its  rhythmical  beat,  not  merely 
in  the  mind  of  each  poet,  but  in  each  phase  of  his 
thought.  We  find  the  same  measured  antithesis  of 
thought,  whether  he  is  considering  the  singer's  en- 


A  Sober  Afterthought  '>-'*7 

vironment  or  his  health,  his  inspiration  or  his  mis- 
sion. 

In  treatment  even  of  the  most  superficial  matters 
related  to  the  poet's  character,  this  vibration  forces 
itself  upon  our  attention.     Poets  are  so   far  from 
subscribing   to   Taine's   belief   in   the   supreme   im- 
portance of  environment  as  molder  of  genius  that 
the  question   of   the   singer's   proper   habitat   is   of 
comparative  indifference  to  them,  yet  the  dualism 
that  we  have  noted  runs  as  true  to  form  here  as  in 
more  fundamental  issues.     When  one  takes  the  suf- 
frage of  poets  in  general  on  the  question  of  environ- 
ment,   two    voices   are   equally   strong.      Genius    is 
fostered  by  solitude,  we  hear;  but  again,  genius  is 
fostered  by  human  companionship.    At  first  we  may 
assume  that  this  divergence  of  view  characterizes 
separate  periods.     Writers  in  the  romantic  period, 
we  say,  praised  the  poet  whose  thought  was  turned 
inward  by  solitude;  while  writers  in  the  Victorian 
period  praised  the  poet  whose  thought  was  turned 
upon   the    spectacle    of   human    passions.      But   on 
finding  that  this  classification   is  true  only  in  the 
most  general  way,  we  go  farther.     Within  the  Vic- 
torian period  Browning,  we  say,  is  the  advocate  of 
the  social  poet,  as  Arnold  is  the  advocate  of  the 
solitary  one.     But  still  our  classification  is  inade- 
quate.    Is  Browning  the  expositor  of  the  gregarious 
poet?     It  is  true  that  he  feels  it  necessary  for  the 
singer  to  "look  upon  men  and  their  cares  and  hopes 
and  fears  and  joys."  ^     But  he  makes  Sordello  flee 

*  Pauline. 


338  The  Poet's  Poet 

like  a  hunted  creature  back  to  Goito  and  solitude  in 
quest  of  renewed  inspiration.  Is  Arnold  the  ex- 
positor of  the  solitary  poet?  True,  he  urges  him  to 
fly  from  "the  strange  disease  of  modern  life."  ^ 
Yet  he  preaches  that  the  duty  of  the  poet  is 

to  scan 
Not  his  own  course,  but  that  of  man.^ 

Within  the  romantic  period  the  same  phenomenon 
is  evident.  Does  Wordsworth  paint  the  ideal  poet 
dwelling  apart  from  human  distractions?  Yet  he 
declares  that  his  deepest  insight  is  gained  by  listen- 
ing to  "the  still  sad  music  of  humanity."  In  Keats, 
Shelley,  Byron,  the  same  antithesis  of  thought  is 
not  less  evident. 

We  cannot  justly  conclude  that  a  compromise  be- 
tween contradictions,  an  avoidance  of  extremes,  is 
what  anyone  of  these  poets  stands  for.  It  is  com- 
plete absorption  in  the  drama  of  human  life  that 
makes  one  a  poet,  they  aver;  but  again,  it  is  com- 
plete isolation  that  allows  the  inmost  poetry  of  one's 
nature  to  rise  to  consciousness.  At  the  same  time 
they  make  it  clear  that  the  supreme  poet  needs  the 
gifts  of  both  environments.  To  quote  Walt  Whit- 
man, 

When  the  full-grown  poet  came. 

Out  spake  pleased  Nature  (the  round  impassive  globe 

with  all  its  shows  of  day  and  night)  saying,  He 

is  mine ; 

*  The  Scholar  Gypsy. 
'  Resignation. 


A  Sober  Afterthought  339 

But  out  spake  too  the  Soul  of  men,  proud,  jealous 
and  unreconciled,  Nay,  he  is  mine  alone ; 

— Then  the  full-grown  poet  stood  between  the  two  and 
took  each  by  the  hand ; 

And  today  and  ever  so  stands,  as  blender,  uniter,  tightly 
holding  hands. 

Which  he  will  never  release  till  he  reconciles  the  two, 

And  wholly  and  joyously  blends  them. 

The  paradox  in  poets'  views  was  equally  per- 
plexing, no  matter  what  phase  of  the  poetic  char- 
acter was  considered.  A  mere  resume  of  the  topics 
discussed  in  these  essays  is  enough  to  make  the 
two  horns  of  the  dilemma  obtrude  themselves.  Did 
we  consider  the  financial  status  of  the  poet?  We 
heard  that  he  should  experience  all  the  luxurious 
sensations  that  wealth  can  bring;  on  the  other  hand 
we  heard  that  his  poverty  should  shield  him  from 
distractions  that  might  call  him  away  from  accumu- 
lation of  spiritual  treasure.  Did  we  consider  the 
poet's  age?  We  heard  that  the  freshness  of  sen- 
sation possessed  only  by  youth  carries  the  secret 
of  poetry;  on  the  other  hand  we  heard  that  the  se- 
cret lies  in  depth  of  spiritual  insight  possible  only 
to  old  age.     So  in  the  allied  question  of  the  poet's 

body.    He  should  have 

The  dress 
Of  flesh  that  amply  lets  in  loveliness 
At  eye  and  ear, 

that  no  beauty  in  the  physical  world  may  escape 
him.  Yet  he  should  be  absorbed  in  the  other  world 
to  such  a  degree  that  blindness,  even,  is  a  blessing 
to  him,  enabling  him  to  "see,  no  longer  blinded  by 


340  The  Poet's  Poet 

his  eyes."  The  question  of  the  poet's  health  arose. 
He  should  have  the  exuberance  and  aplomb  of  the 
young  animal ;  no,  he  should  have  a  body  frail 
enough  to  enable  him,  like  the  mediaeval  mystic, 
to  escape  from  its  importunate  demands  upon  the 
spirit. 

In  the  more  fundamental  questions  that  poets 
considered,  relating  to  the  poet's  temperament,  his 
loves,  his  inspiration,  his  morality,  his  religion,  his 
mission,  the  same  cleavage  invariably  appeared. 
What  constitutes  the  poetic  temperament?  It  is  a 
fickle  interchange  of  joy  and  grief,  for  the  poet 
is  lifted  on  the  wave  of  each  new  sensation ;  it  is 
an  imperturbable  serenity,  for  the  poet  dwells  apart 
with  the  eternal  verities.  What  is  the  distinguish- 
ing characteristic  of  his  love?  The  object  of  his 
worship  must  be  embodied,  passionate,  yet  his  de- 
sire is  for  purely  spiritual  union  with  her.  What 
is  the  nature  of  his  inspiration?  It  fills  him  with 
trancelike  impassivity  to  sensation ;  it  comes  upon 
him  with  such  overwhelming  sensation  that  he  must 
touch  the  walls  to  see  whether  they  or  his  visions 
are  the  reality.^  How  is  his  moral  life  different 
from  that  of  other  men?  He  is  more  fiercely 
tempted,  because  he  is  more  sensitive  to  human  pas- 
sions; he  is  shut  away  from  all  temptations  because 
his  interest  is  solely  in  the  principle  of  beauty.  What 
is  the  nature  of  his  religious  instinct?  He  is  mad 
with  thirst  for  God ;  he  will  have  no  God  but  his 

^  See   Christopher   Wordsworth,  Memoirs   of   Wordsworth, 
Vol.  II,  p.  480. 


A  Sober  Afterthought  341 

own  humanity.  What  is  his  mission?  He  must 
awaken  men  to  the  wonder  of  the  physical  world 
and  fit  them  to  abide  therein ;  he  must  redeem  them 
from  physical  bondage,  and  open  their  eyes  to  the 
spiritual  world. 

The  impatient  listener  to  this  lengthy  catalogue 
of  the  poet's  views  may  assert  that  it  has  no  signifi- 
cance. It  merely  shows  that  there  are  many  kinds 
of  poets,  who  attempt  to  imitate  many  aspects  of 
human  life.  But  surely  our  catalogue  does  not 
show  just  this.  There  is  no  multiform  picture  of 
the  poet  here.  The  pendulum  of  his  desire  vi- 
brates undeviatingly  between  two  points  only. 
Sense  and  spirit,  spirit  and  sense,  the  pulse  of  his  na- 
ture seems  to  reiterate  incessantly.  There  is  no 
poet  so  absorbed  in  sensation  that  physical  objects 
do  not  occasionally  fade  into  unreality  when  he  com- 
pares them  with  the  spirit  of  life.  Even  Walt  Whit- 
man, most  sensuous  of  all  our  poets,  exclaims, 

Sometimes  how  strange  and  clear  to  the  soul 
That  all  these  solid  things  are  indeed  but  appa- 
ritions, concepts,  non-realities.^ 

On  the  other  hand  there  is  no  poet  whose  taste  is 
so  purely  spiritual  that  he  is  indifferent  to  sensation. 
The  idealism  of  Wordsworth,  even,  did  not  preclude 
his  finding  in  sensation 

An  appetite,  a  feeling  and  a  love 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm 
By  thought  supplied. 

*  Apparitions. 


342  The  Poet's  Poet 

Is  this  systole  and  diastole  of  the  affection  from 
sense  to  spirit,  from  spirit  to  sense,  peculiarly  char- 
acteristic of  English  poets?  There  may  be  some  rea- 
son for  assuming  that  it  is.  Historians  have  re- 
peatedly pointed  out  that  there  are  two  strains  in 
the  English  blood,  the  one  northern  and  ascetic,  the 
other  southern  and  epicurean.  In  the  modern  Eng- 
lish poet  the  austere  prophetic  character  of  the 
Norse  scald  is  wedded  to  the  impressionability  of 
the  troubadour.  No  wonder  there  is  a  battle  in  his 
breast  when  he  tries  to  single  out  one  element  or  the 
other  as  his  most  distinctive  quality  of  soul.  Yet, 
were  it  not  unsafe  to  generalize  when  our  data  ap- 
ply to  only  one  country,  we  should  venture  the  as- 
sertion that  the  dualism  of  the  poet's  desires  is  not 
an  insular  characteristic,  but  is  typical  of  his  race 
in  every  country. 

Because  the  poet  is  drawn  equally  to  this  world 
and  to  the  other  world,  shall  we  characterize  him 
as  a  hybrid  creature,  and  assert  that  an  irreconcil- 
able discord  is  in  his  soul?  We  shall  prove  our- 
selves singularly  deaf  to  concord  if  we  do  so.  Poets 
have  been  telling  us  over  and  over  again  that  the 
distinctive  element  in  the  poetic  nature  is  harmony. 
What  is  harmony?  It  is  the  reconciliation  of  oppo- 
sites,  says  Eurymachus  in  the  Symposium.  It  is 
union  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite,  says  Socrates  in 
the  Philebus.  Do  the  poet's  desires  point  in  oppo- 
site directions?  But  so,  it  seems,  do  the  poplars 
that  stand  tiptoe,  breathless,  at  the  edge  of  the 
dreaming  pool.     The  whole  secret  of  the  aesthetic 


A  Sober  Afterthought  343 

repose  lies  in  the  duality  of  the  poet's  desire.  His 
imagination  enables  him  to  see  all  life  as  two  in 
one,  or  one  in  two ;  he  leaves  us  uncertain  which. 
His  imagination  reflects  the  spiritual  in  the  sensual 
and  the  sensual  in  the  spiritual  till  we  cannot  tell 
which  is  the  more  tangible  or  the  more  meaningful. 
We  sought  unity  in  the  poetic  character,  but  we 
can  reduce  a  nature  to  complete  and  barren  unity 
only  by  draining  it  of  imagination,  and  it  is  imagina- 
tion which  enables  the  poet  to  find  aesthetic  unity 
in  the  two  worlds  of  sense  and  spirit,  where  the 
rest  of  us  can  see  only  conflict.  There  is  a  little 
poem,  by  Walter  Conrad  Arensberg,  which  is  to  me 
a  symbol  of  this  power  of  reflection  which  distin- 
guishes the  poetic  imagination.  It  is  called  Voyage 
a  L' In  fine: 

The   swan   existing 

Is  like  a  song  with  an  accompaniment 

Imaginary. 

Across  the  grassy  lake. 

Across  the  lake  to  the  shadow  of  the  willows 

It  is  accompanied  by  an  image, 

— as  by  Debussy's 

"Reflets  dans  I'eau." 

The  swan  that  is 

Reflects 

Upon  the  solitai-y  water — breast  to  breast 

With  the  duplicity: 

"The  other  one !" 


344  The  Poet's  Poet 

And  breast  to  breast  it  is  confused. 
O  visionary  wedding!   O  stateliness 

of  the  procession ! 
It  is  accompanied  by  the  image  of  itself 
Alone. 

At  night 

The  lake  is  a  wide  silence, 

Without  imagination. 

But  why  should  poets  assume,  someone  may 
object,  that  this  mystic  answering  of  sense  to  spirit 
and  of  spirit  to  sense  is  to  be  discovered  by  the 
imagination  of  none  but  poets?  All  men  are  made 
up  of  flesh  and  spirit;  do  not  the  desires  of  all  men, 
accordingly,  point  to  the  spiritual  and  to  the  physi- 
cal, exactly  as  do  the  poet's?  In  a  sense,  yes;  but 
on  the  other  hand  all  men  but  the  poet  have  an  aim 
that  is  clearly  either  physical  or  spiritual;  there- 
fore they  do  not  stand  poised  between  the  two  worlds 
with  the  perfect  balance  of  interests  which  marks 
the  poet.  The  philosopher  and  the  man  of  religion 
recognize  their  goal  as  a  spiritual  and  ascetic  one. 
If  they  concern  themselves  more  than  is  needful 
with  the  temporal  and  sensual,  they  feel  that  they 
are  false  to  their  ideal.  The  scientist  and  the  man 
of  affairs,  on  the  other  hand,  are  concerned  with 
the  physical ;  therefore  most  of  the  time  they  dismiss 
consideration  of  the  spiritual  as  being  outside  of 
their  province.  Of  course  many  persons  would 
disagree  with  this  last  statement.     The  genius  of 


A  Sober  Afterthought  345 

an  Edison,  they  assert,  is  precisely  like  the  genius 
of  a  poet.  But  if  this  were  true,  we  should  be 
moved  by  the  mechanism  of  a  phonograph  just  as  we 
are  moved  by  a  poem,  and  we  are  not.  We  may  be 
amazed  by  the  invention,  and  still  find  our  thoughts 
tied  to  the  physical  world.  It  is  not  the  instrument, 
but  the  voice  of  an  artist  added  to  it  that  makes  us 
conscious  of  the  two  worlds  of  sense  and  spirit, 
reflecting  one  another. 

Supposing  that  all  this  is  true,  what  is  gained  by 
discovering,  from  a  consensus  of  poets'  views,  that 
the  distinctive  characteristic  of  the  poet  is  harmony 
of  sense  and  spirit?  Is  not  this  so  obvious  as  to  be 
a  truism?  It  is  perhaps  so  obvious  that  like  all  the 
truest  things  in  the  world  it  is  likely  to  be  ignored 
unless  insisted  upon  occasionally.  Certainly  it  has 
been  ignored  too  frequently  in  the  history  of  Eng- 
lish criticism.  Whenever  men  of  simpler  aims 
than  the  poet  have  written  criticism,  they  have  mis- 
read the  issue  in  various  ways,  and  have  usually 
ended  by  condemning  the  poet  in  so  far  as  he  diverged 
from  their  own  goal. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  moral  obsession  which  has 
twisted  so  much  of  English  criticism  is  the  result 
of  failure  to  grasp  the  real  nature  of  the  poet's 
duality.  Criticism  arose,  with  Gosson's  School  of 
Abuse,  as  an  attack  upon  the  ethics  of  the  poet  by 
the  puritan,  who  had  cut  himself  off  from  the  joys 
of  sense.  Because  champions  of  poetry  were  con- 
cerned   with    answering    this    attack,    the    bulk  of 


346  The  Poet's  Poet 

Elizabethan  criticism,  that  of  Lodge/  Harrington,- 
Meres,^  Campion,*  Daniel,^  and  even  in  lesser  degree 
of  Sidney,  obscures  the  aesthetic  problem  by  turn- 
ing it  into  an  ethical  one. 

In  the  criticism  of  Sidney,  himself  a  poet,  one 
does  find  implied  a  recognition  of  the  twofold  sig- 
nificance of  the  poet's  powers.  He  asserts  his  spirit- 
ual pre-eminence  strongly,  declaring  that  the  poet, 
unlike  the  scientist,  is  not  bound  to  the  physical 
world.*^  On  the  other  hand  he  is  clearly  aware  of 
the  need  for  a  sensuous  element  in  poetry,  since  by 
it,  Sidney  declares,  the  poet  may  lead  men  by 
"delight"   to    follow   the    forms   of   virtue. 

The  next  critic  of  note,  Dryden,  in  his  revulsion 
from  the  ascetic  character  which  the  puritans  would 
develop  in  the  poet,  swung  too  far  to  the  other 
extreme,  and  threw  the  poetic  character  out  of 
balance  by  belittling  its  spiritual  insight.  He  did 
justice  to  the  physical  element  in  poetry,  defining 
poetic  drama,  the  type  of  his  immediate  concern, 
as  "a  just  and  lively  image  of  human  nature,  in  its 
actions,  passions,  and  traverses  of  fortune,"  '''  but 
he  appears  to  have  felt  the  ideal  aspect  of  the  poet's 
nature  as  merely  a  negation  of  the  sensual,  so  that 
he  was  driven  to  the  absurdity  of  recommending  a 

^Defense  of  Poetry,  Musick  and  Stage  Plays. 
^Apology  for  Poetry. 
'  Palladis  Tamia. 

*  Observations  in  the  Art  of  English  Poetry. 
^Defense  of  Rhyme. 

*  "He  is  not  bound  to  any  such  subjection,  as  scientists,  to 
nature."     Defense  of  Poetry. 

''English  Garner,  III,  513. 


A  Sober  Afterthought  347 

purely  mechanical  device,  rhyme,  as  a  means  of 
elevating  poetry  above  the  sordid  plane  of  "a  bare 
imitation."  In  the  eighteenth  century,  Edmund 
Burke  likewise  laid  too  much  stress  upon  the  physical 
aspect  of  the  poet's  nature,  in  accounting  for  the 
sublime  in  poetry  as  originating  in  the  sense  of 
pain,  and  the  beautiful  as  originating  in  pleasure. 
Yet  he  comes  closer  than  most  critics  to  laying  his 
finger  on  the  particular  point  which  distinguishes 
poets  from  philosophers,  namely,  their  dependence 
upon  sensation. 

With  the  single  exception  of  Burke,  however,  the 
critics  of  the  eighteenth  century  labored  under  a 
misapprehension  no  less  blind  than  the  moral  obses- 
sion which  twisted  Elizabethan  criticism.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  critics  were  prone  to  confuse  the 
spiritual  element  in  the  poet's  nature  with  intellec- 
tualism,  and  the  sensuous  element  with  emotionalism. 
Such  criticism  tended  to  drive  the  poet  either  into 
an  arid  display  of  wit,  on  the  one  hand,  or  into 
sentimental  excess,  on  the  other,  and  the  native 
English  distrust  of  emotion  led  eighteenth  century 
critics  to  praise  the  poet  when  the  intellect  had  the 
upper  hand.  But  surely  poets  have  made  it  clear 
enough  that  the  intellect  is  not  the  distinctive  charac- 
teristic of  the  poet.  To  be  intelligent  is  merely  to 
be  human.  Intelligence  is  only  a  tool,  poets  have 
repeatedly  insisted,  in  their  quarrel  with  philosophers. 
In  proportion  as  one  is  intelligent  within  one's  own 
field,  one  excels,  poets  would  admit.  If  one  is  intel- 
ligent with  respect  to  fisticuffs  one  is  likely  to  become 


348  The  Poet's  Poet 

a  good  prize-fighter,  but  no  matter  how  far  refine- 
ment of  intelHgence  goes  in  this  direction,  it  will 
not  make  a  pugilist  into  a  poet.  Intelligence  must 
belong  likewise,  in  signal  degree,  to  the  great  poet, 
but  it  is  neither  one  of  the  two  essential  elements 
in  his  nature.  Augustan  critics  starved  the  spiritual 
element  in  poetry,  even  while  they  imagined  that 
they  were  feeding  it,  for  in  sharpening  his  wit  the 
poet  came  no  nearer  expressing  the  "poor  soul,  the 
center  of  his  sinful  earth"  than  when  he  reveled  in 
emotion.  We  no  longer  believe  that  in  the  most 
truly  poetic  nature  the  intelligence  of  a  Pope  is 
joined  with  the  emotionalism  of  a  Rousseau.  We 
believe  that  the  spirituality  of  a  Crashaw  is  blent 
with  the  sensuousness  of  a  Swinburne. 

Nineteenth  century  criticism,  since  it  is  almost 
entirely  the  work  of  poets,  should  not  be  thus  at 
odds  with  the  conception  of  the  poet  expressed  in 
poetrj.  But  although  nineteenth  century  prose 
criticism  moves  in  the  right  direction,  it  is  not 
entirely  adequate.  The  poet  is  not  at  his  best  when 
he  is  working  in  a  prose  medium.  He  works  too 
consciously  in  prose,  hence  his  intuitive  flashes  are 
not  likely  to  find  expression.  After  he  has  tried 
to  express  his  buried  life  there,  he  himself  is  likely 
to  warn  us  that  what  he  has  said  "is  well,  is  elo- 
quent, but  'tis  not  true."  Even  Shelley,  the  most 
successful  of  poet-critics,  gives  us  a  more  vivid 
comprehension  of  the  poetical  balance  of  sense  and 
spirit  through  his  poet-heroes  than  through  The 
Defense  of  Poetry,  for  he  is  almost  exclusively  con- 


A  Sober  Afterthought  349 

cerned,  in  that  essay,  with  the  spiritual  aspect  of 
poetry.  He  expresses,  in  fact,  the  converse  of 
Dryden's  view  in  that  he  regards  the  sensuous  as 
negation  or  dross  merely.     He  asserts : 

Few  poets  of  the  highest  class  have  chosen  to  exhibit 
the  beauty  of  their  conception  in  naked  truth  and 
splendor,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  the  alloy  of  cos- 
tume, habit,  etc.,  be  not  necessary  to  temper  this 
planetar)'  music  to  mortal  ears. 

The  harmony  in  Shelley's  nature  which  made  it 
possible  for  his  contemporaries  to  believe  him  a 
gross  sensualist,  and  succeeding  generations  to  believe 
him  an  angel,  is  better  expressed  by  Browning,  who 
says: 

His  noblest  characteristic  I  call  his  simultaneous 
perception  of  Power  and  Love  in  the  absolute,  and  of 
beauty  and  good  in  the  concrete,  while  he  throws,  from 
his  poet-station  between  them  both,  swifter,  subtler 
and  more  numerous  films  for  the  connection  of  each 
with  each  than  have  been  thrown  by  any  modern 
artificer  of  whom  I  have  knowledge.^ 

Yet  Browning,  likewise,  gives  a  more  illuminating 
picture  of  the  poetic  nature  in  his  poetry  than  in 
his   prose. 

The  peculiar  merit  of  poetry  about  the  poet  is 
that  it  makes  a  valuable  supplement  to  prose  criti- 
cism. We  have  been  tempted  to  deny  that  such 
poetry  is  the  highest  type  of  art.    It  has  seemed  that 

*  Preface  to  the  letters  of  Shelley  (afterward  found  spu- 
rious). 


350  The  Poet's  Poet 

poets,  when  they  are  introspective  and  analytical  of 
their  gift,  are  not  in  the  highest  poetic  mood.  But 
when  we  are  on  the  quest  of  criticism,  instead  of 
poetry,  we  are  frankly  grateful  for  such  verse.  It 
is  analytical  enough  to  be  intelligible  to  us,  and  still 
intuitive  enough  to  convince  us  of  its  truthfulness. 
Wordsworth's  Prelude  has  been  condemned  in  cer- 
tain quarters  as  "a  talking  about  poetry,  not  poetry 
itself,"  but  in  part,  at  least,  the  Prelude  is  truly 
poetry.  For  this  reason  it  gives  us  more  valuable 
ideas  about  the  nature  of  poetry  than  does  the 
Preface  to  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  If  it  is  worth  while 
to  analyze  the  poetic  character  at  all,  then  poetry 
on  the  poet  is  invaluable  to  us. 

Perhaps  it  is  too  much  for  us  to  decide  whether 
the  picture  of  the  poet  at  which  we  have  been  gazing 
is  worthy  to  be  placed  above  Plato's  picture  of  the 
philosopher.  The  poet  does  not  contradict  Plato's 
charge  against  him.  His  self-portrait  bears  out 
the  accusation  that  he  is  unable  to  see  "the  divine 
beauty — pure  and  clear  and  unalloyed,  not  clogged 
with  the  pollutions  of  mortality,  and  all  the  colors 
and  varieties  of  human  life."  ^  Plato  would  agree 
with  the  analysis  of  the  poetic  character  that  Keats 
once  struggled  with,  when  he  exclaimed, 

What  quality  went  to  form  a  man  of  achievement, 
especially  in  literature,  and  which  Shakespeare  pos- 
sessed so  enormously — I  mean  Negative  Capability, 
that  is,  when  a  man  is  capable  of  being  in  uncertain- 
ties, mysteries,  doubts,  without  any  irritable  reaching 

'  Symposium,  212. 


A  Sober  Afterthought  351 

after  fact  and  reason.  Coleridge,  for  instance,  would 
let  go  by  a  fine  isolated  verisimilitude  caught  from  the 
Pentralium  of  mystery,  from  being  incapable  of 
remaining  content  with  half-knowledge — With  a  great 
poet  the  sense  of  Beauty  overcomes  every  other  con- 
sideration, or  rather  obliterates  all  consideration. 

Plato  would  agree  with  this, — all  but  the  last  sen- 
tence. Only,  in  place  of  the  phrase  "negative  capa- 
bility," he  would  substitute  "incapability,"  and 
reflect  that  the  poet  fails  to  see  absolute  beauty 
because  he  is  not  content  to  leave  the  sensual  behind 
and  press  on  to  absolute  reality. 

It  may  be  that  Plato  is  right,  yet  one  cannot  help 
wishing  that  sometime  a  poet  may  arise  of  greater 
power  of  persuasion  than  any  with  whom  we  have 
dealt,  who  will  prove  to  Plato  what  he  appears  ever 
longing  to  be  convinced  of,  that  absolute  ideality  is 
not  a  negation  of  the  sensual,  and  that  poetry,  in 
revealing  the  union  of  sense  and  spirit,  is  the  strong- 
est proof  of  idealism  that  we  possess.  A  poet  may 
yet  arise  who  will  prove  that  he  is  right  in  refusing 
to  acknowledge  that  this  world  is  merely  a  surface 
upon  which  is  reflected  the  ideals  which  constitute 
reality  and  which  abide  in  a  different  realm.  The 
assumption  in  that  conception  is  that,  if  men  have 
spiritual  vision,  they  may  apprehend  ideals  directly, 
altogether  apart  from  sense.  On  the  contrary,  the 
impression  given  by  the  poet  is  that  ideality  consti- 
tutes the  very  essence  of  the  so-called  physical  world, 
and  that  this  essence  is  continually  striving  to  express 
itself    through    refinement    and    remolding    of    the 


352  The  Poet's  Poet 

outer  crust  of  things.  So,  when  the  world  of  sense 
comes  to  express  perfectly  the  ideal,  it  will  not  be 
a  mere  representation  of  reality.  It  will  be  reality. 
If  he  can  prove  this,  we  must  acknowledge  that,  not 
the  rationalistic  philosopher,  but  the  poet,  grasps 
reality  in  toto. 

However  inconclusive  his  proof,  the  claims  of  the 
poet  must  fascinate  one  with  their  implications. 
The  two  aspects  of  human  life,  the  physical  and  the 
ideal,  focus  in  the  poet,  and  the  result  is  the  har- 
mony which  is  art.  The  fact  is  of  profound  philo- 
sophical significance,  surely,  for  union  of  the  appar- 
ent contradictions  of  the  sensual  and  the  spiritual 
can  only  mean  that  idealism  is  of  the  essence  of 
the  universe.  What  is  the  poetic  metaphor  but  the 
revelation  of  an  identical  meaning  in  the  physical 
and  spiritual  world?  The  sympathetic  reader  of 
poetry  cannot  but  see  the  reflection  of  the  spiritual 
in  the  sensual,  and  the  sensual  in  the  spiritual,  even 
as  does  the  poet,  and  one,  as  the  other,  must  be  by 
temperament  an  idealist. 


INDEX 


Addison,  Joseph,  234 

"A.  E."  (see  George  William 

Russell) 
Aeschylus,  23,  41,  288 
Agathon,  116,  154,  155,  156 
Akins,  Zoe,  127 
Alcaeus,  65 

Aldrich,  Anne  Reeve,   loi 
Aldrich,   Thomas    Bailey,  211 
Alexander,  Hartley  Burr,  123 
Alexander,  William,   168 
AUston,    Washington,    286 
Ambercrombe,    Lascelles,    94 
Anderson,    Margaret    Steele, 

186 
Angelo,  Michael,  23,  38,  282 
Arensberg,     Walter     Conrad, 

343 

Aristotle,  3,  4,  12,  13,  118,  119, 
292,  295,  297 

Arnold,  Edwin,  84 

Arnold,  Matthew,  335,  2,2,7, 
338;  his  discontent,  34;  on 
the  poet's  death,  81,  in- 
spiration 211,  loneliness  52, 
53,  93,  morality  242,  relig- 
ion 269,  usefulness  304,  314, 
315,  324,  youth  105.  106; 
his  sense  of  superiority,  29 

Arnold,  Thomas,  267 

Asquith,   Herbert,  288 

Austin,  Alfred,  133,  145,  211, 
312 

Bacon,  Josephine  Dodge  Das- 

kam,  59 
Baker,     Karle     Wilson,     140, 

164 
Baudelaire,     Charles     Pierre, 

227 
Beatrice,   151,  152 


Beattie,    James,    58,    61,    90, 

188,  242,  310 
Beddoes,  Thomas  Lovell,  195 
Beers,  Henry  A.,  164 
Benet,    Stephen    Vincent,    24, 

211 
Benet,  William   Rose,  31,  45, 

196,  204,   266 
Bennet,   William,  62,  211 
Binyon,      Robert      Lawrence, 

205 

Blake,  William,  later  poets 
on,  217,  265,  271 ;  on  in- 
spiration, 170,  196,  199,  202; 
on  the  poet  as  truthteller, 
304;  on  the  poet's  religion, 
271 

Blunden,   Edmund,  196 

Boccaccio,  286 

Boker,  George  Henry,  105 

Borrow,  George,  96 

Bowles,  William  Lisle,  72,  80, 
90,    92,    100,    195,    273,    304, 

310,   314.   334 
Branch,      Anna      Hempstead, 

58,    164 
Brawne,  Fanny  H.,  4 
Bridges,  Robert,  41,  202 
Bronte,    Emily,    84,    93,    103, 

272,  278 
Brooke,    Rupert,    67,    70,    71, 
103,   109,  124,  126,  128,   136, 
287 
Browne,  T.  E.,  62,,  100 
Browning,   Elizabeth   Barrett, 
appearance,      74;      Aurora 
Leigh,  57,  61,  69;  on  Keats, 
68;  on  the  poet's  age,  100; 
content       with       his       own 
time     35,     democracy     319, 
eyes  70,  71,  habitat  93,  95, 


353 


354 


Index 


health  78,  79,  humanitari- 
anism  36,  inferiority  to  his 
creations  19,  inspiration 
169,  174,  179,  186,  198,  209,, 
love  112,  118,  134,  139,  144, 
148,  150,  morals  218,  pain 
40,  195,  personality  12,  re- 
ligion 279,  resentment  at 
patronage  29,  yj,  44,  63, 
self-consciousness  14,  self- 
expression  204,  sex  87,  88, 
89,  usefulness  301,  303,  304, 
320j  321,  322;  other  poets 
on,  84 

Browning,  Robert,  335,  336, 
2,Z7;  on  fame,  ZZ,  §4;  on 
inspiration,  167,  175,  177, 
180,  202;  on  the  poet's 
beauty  89,  loneliness  53, 
love  114,  116,  140,  morals 
216,  224,  226,  237,  248,  249, 
250,  persecutions  41,  pride 
24,  religion  276,  278,  self- 
expression  II,  112,  sex  87, 
superiority  30,  32,  zz^  36, 
usefulness  289,  303,  313, 
318;  on  Shakespeare,  5,  6, 
50 ;  on  Shelley,  44,  243,  349 ; 
Sordello,  29,  57,  61,  74,  79, 
83.  103,  202,  253,  315, 
326;  other  poets  on,  63, 
66 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  47, 
105,  119,   164,  207,  208 

Buchanan,  Robert,  63,  235 

Bunker,  John  Joseph,  288 

Burke,  Edmund,  347 

Burleigh,  "William  Henry,  72, 
77,  312 

Burnet,   Dana,   loi 

Burns,  Robert,  his  self-de- 
preciation, 188 ;  on  the 
poet's  caste  61,  habitat  90, 
91,  inspiration  164,  170,  196, 
197,  love  of  liberty  318, 
morals  227,  persecutions 
40,  poverty  98,  100,  superi- 
ority 28;  other  poets  on,  43, 
97,  218,  247,  275 

Burton,  Richard,  41,   167 


Butler,  Samuel,  97 

Byron,  Lord,  4,  10,  335,  336, 
338;  his  body,  64,  65,  79; 
escape  from  himself  in 
poetry,  6;  friendship  with 
Shelley,  52;  indifference  to 
fame,  28;  later  poets  on, 
23,  43-  ^33,  247;  his  morals, 
211,  221,  225,  229,  237,  254, 
255;  his  mother,  59;  his  re- 
ligion, 273,  274;  self-por- 
traits in  verse,  26,  32,  33, 
44,  60,  90,  92,  96,  TGI,  121 ; 
superiority,  295 ;  on  Tasso, 
25,   42,    147 

Camoens,  97 

Campbell,     Thomas,     62,     91, 

108  _ 
Campion,  Thomas,  346 
Candole,  Alec  de,  211 
Carlin,    Francis,    63,    72,    96, 

318 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  232,  323 
Carman,  Bliss,  305 
Carpenter,  Rhys,  318 
Gary,  Alice,  193,  210 
Cary,  Elisabeth  Luther,  95 
Cassells,  S.  J.,  40 
Cavalcanti,  Guido,  233 
Cawein,  Madison,  92,  94,  211, 

238,  300 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,  202 
Cervantes,  97 
Chapman,  George,  185 
Chatterton,    Thomas,    23,    24, 

41,  97 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  10,  46,  64, 

74,   75,  97,    III,   174 
Cheney,  Annie  Elizabeth,  123, 

1 75 
Chenier,  Andre,  42 
Chesterton,  Gilbert  Keith,  40, 

211 
Chivers,  Thomas   Holley,  43, 

247,  312,  334 
Clare,  John,  33,  49,  63,  195 
Clough,     Arthur     Hugh,    71, 

226,  252,   275 
Coleridge,   Hartley,   59 


Index 


355 


Coleridge,      Samuel      Taylor, 
appearance,      69,      70;      on 
Blake,  218;   on   Chatterton, 
42;      friendship      with 
Wordsworth,    51  ;     on    the 
poet's  habitat  90,  health  79, 
love    120,    morals   223,   237, 
reflection    in    nature    9,    re- 
ligion  263,   268,   youth    105, 
usefulness    304,    318;    later 
poets  on  165 
Collins,    William,   89,   97,   237 
Colonna,  Vittoria,  15 
Colvin,  Sidney,  5,  70,  153 
Conkling,  Grace   Hazard,  288 
Cornwall,    Barry    (see    Proc- 
ter, Bryan  Waller) 
Cowper,    William,   2T,   58,  90, 

19s.  277 
Cox,  Ethel  Louise,  314 
Crabbe,    George,   ZT,   61,    196, 

229,  312 
Crashaw,   Richard,  348 
Cratylus,  255 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  49 

Daniel,  Samuel,  346 

D'Annunzio,  Gabriele,  286 

Dante,  23,  42,  153,  161,  166, 
187,  259,  282,  286;  G.  L. 
Raymond  on,  142,  233 ;  Os- 
car Wilde  on,  82 ;  Sara 
King  Wiley  on,  142 

Dargan,  Olive,  89,   141 

David,  288 

Davidson,  John,  24,  59,  63, 
TZ,  95,  224,  263 

Davies,  William  Henry,  96 

Dermody,   Thomas,    195 

Descartes,  2>Z^ 

Dickinson,  Emily,  205,  285 

Dionysodorus,   7 

Dobell,    Sidney,   84 

Dobson,  Austin,  34,  95,  164, 
206,  296 

Dommett,  Alfred,  96 

Donne,  John,  286 

Dowden,  Edward,  42,  107, 
168,     176,     202,     204,     211, 

305 


Dowson,  Ernest,  142,  172,  225 
Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  49 
Drinkwater,     John,     51,     186, 

305 
Druce,   C.  J.,   140 
Dryden,   John,  97,   346,   349 
Dunbar,    Paul    Laurence,    40, 

47 
Dunroy,  William  Reed,  35 
Dunsany,   Lord    Edward,   78 
Dyer,   Sidney,  89 

Ehrman,  Max,  35,  204,  211 

Elijah,   200 

Eliot,  Ebenezer,  217 

Eliot,  George,  314,  325 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  his 
contempt  for  the  public, 
30,  33;  his  democracy,  46; 
his  humility,  18;  on  inspi- 
ration, 164,  165,  166,  175, 
199,  200,  201,  202;  on  love 
of  fame,  34;  on  the  poet's 
divinity  24,  love  150,  mor- 
als 251,  poverty  loi,  soli- 
tude 48,  94,  286,  usefulness 
206,  290,  300,  304,  314,  z^2, 
323,  324 

Euripedes,  41 

Euthydemus,   7 

Evans,  Mrs.  E.  H.,   17 

Faimer,   C.   H.,   17 
Fairfield,  S.  L.,  40 
Field,  Eugene,  25,  314 
Flecker,  James  Elroy,  35,  94, 

i97o  307 
Flint,  F.  S.,  49 
French,  Daniel   Chester,   14 
Freneau,     Philip     Morin,    84, 

127,  318 
Fuller,  Frances,  69 
Fuller,   Metta,  69 

Gage,   Mrs.   Frances,  49 
Garnett,   Richard,   41,   2&^ 
Gibson,    Wilfred    Wilson,   67, 

70,   lOI 
Giddings,      Franklin     Henry, 

164 


356 


Index 


Gilbert,  Sir  William 
Schvvenek,  38 

Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  17, 
40;  on  Helen  Hunt  Jack- 
son, 84;  on  Emma  Lazarus, 
84;  on  the  poet's  age  105, 
109,  121,  blindness  ^2,  in- 
spiration 35,  176,  180,  197, 
202,  morality  216,  nor- 
mality 39,   poverty   98 

Gillman,  James,  263 

Giltinan,    Caroline,   203 

Goethe,  266,  271 

Gosse,  Edmund,  30,  35,  211, 
222,  305,  329 

Gosson,  Stephen,  345 

Graves,  Robert,  51 

Gray,  Thomas,  39,  60,  71, 
108,   312,  318 

Grenfil,  Julian,  288 

Griffith,   William,  95 

Guiterman,  Arthur,  283 

Hake,    Thomas    Gordon,    loi 
Halleck,  Shelley,  62 
Halpine,      Charles      Graham, 

lOI 

Hardy,  Thomas,  54,  105,  136, 

149 
Harris,     Thomas     Lake,     44, 

238,  314 
Harrison,  Birge,  79 
Hayne,    Paul    Hamilton^    40, 

47,    106,  211,  286 
Hazlitt,  William,  166 
Hemans,  Felicia,  84 
Henderson,    Daniel,    204,    318 
Henley,    William    Ernest,   35, 

95,  105,  234 
Herbert,  George,  286 
Herrick,  Robert,  50 
Hevkflett,   Maurice,  96,   148 
Hildreth,  Charles  Latin,  65 
Hill,   H.,  2,7 
Hilliard,      George      Stillman, 

74 
Hillyer,    Robert    Silliman,   21, 

204 
HoflFman,  C.  F.,  43,  195 
Hogg,   Thomas   Jefferson,  80 


Holland,    Josiah    Gilbert,    39, 
47.    58,    T7,    146,    194,    196, 
218,  280 
Holmes,   Oliver   Wendell,    18, 
47,    62,    106,    164,    182,    204, 
211,  223,  312 
Homer,  4,  56,  J2,  97,  187,  282 
Hood,  Thomas,  Z7,  89,  321 
Hooper,  Lucy,  177 
"Hope,  Lawrence"    (see  Vio- 
let   Nicolson) 
Home,  Richard  Hengest,  211, 

244 
Houghton,  Lord,   127,   195 
Housman,    Laurence,   21 
Hovey,  Richard,   176,  227 
Hubbard,   Harvey,    106 
Hubner,      Charles      William, 

314 
Hughes,     John,     72,     85,    89, 

188,  237 
Hugo,  Victor,  42,  45 
Hunt,   Leigh,  5 

Ingelow,  Jean,  39,  193,  204, 
231,  281 

Jackson,  Helen  Hunt,  25,  39, 
84,    193,  286 

Jameson,  Mrs.  Anna  Brown- 
ell,  74,  226 

Johnson,  Donald  F.  Goold, 
288 

Johnson,  Lionel,  172,  227 

Johnson,  Robert  Underwood, 
318 

Johnson,    Rossiter,   288 

Johnson,  Dr.   Samuel,  97 

Jonson,  Ben,  50,  58 

Kaufman,  Herbert,  288 
Keats,  John,  4,  ^6,  338;  his 
body,  66,  70,  79,  81,  212, 
350;  on  Burns,  218;  Chris- 
topher North  on,  5 ;  on  his 
desire  for  fame,  zj, ',  his 
egotism,  19;  on  Elizabeth- 
an poets,  50;  on  expres- 
sion, 207,  208;  on  the  har- 
mony   of    poets,    zZi  \    on 


JNDE^t 


357 


Homer's  blindness,  72 ;  on 
his  indifference  to  the  pub- 
lic, 29;  on  inspiration,  164, 
167,  171.  172,  174,  175,  185; 
later  poets  on  Keats,  23,  43, 
44,  62,  68;  on  love,  112, 
153;  quarrel  with  phi- 
losophy, 307;  on  the  poet's 
democracy  319,  gift  of 
prophecy  311,  habitat  94, 
morals  237,  persecutions 
40,  unpoetical  character  6, 
9,  unobtrusiveness  5,  use- 
fulness 299,  309,  318 

Keble,  John,  235 

Kemble,  Frances  Anne,  49 

Kent,   Charles,  318 

Kenyon,  James  Benjamin, 
127,    140 

Kerl,  Simon,  62,  loi,  318 

Khayyam,  Omar,  250 

Kilmer,  Joyce,  24,  67,  72, 
75,  76,  78,  103,  109,  169, 
229,  266,  281,  287,  296 

Kingsley,  Charles,  84,  127, 
128 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  31.  35,  211 

Knibbs,  Harry  Herbert,  96 

Lamb,   Charles,  69 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  120; 
on  Byron,  134;  confidence 
in  immortality,  20;  on  fe- 
male poets,  85 ;  on  Homer, 
72;  on  intoxication  and  in- 
spiration, 171;  on  the  poet's 
age  106,  107,  164,  morals 
229,  pride  29,  30;  on 
poetry  and  reason,  310;  on 
Shakespeare,  6,  7;  on 
Southey,  42,  44,  5i,  3^7 

Lang,  Andrew,  42,  164,  188, 
296 

Lanier,  Sidney,  10,  18,  256, 
257,  311,  314 

Larcom,  Lucy,  305 

Laura,    151 

Lazarus,  Emma,  84,  89,  133 

Ledwidge,  Francis,  40,  103, 
io9j  288,  296 


Le     Gallienne,     Richard,     76, 
103,     105,     229,     241,     269, 
290 
Leonard,  William  Ellery,  318 
Lindsay,   Vachel,  63,  280 
Lockhart,  John  Gibson,  230 
Lodge,  Thomas,   126,  346 
Lombroso,  Cesare,  214,  228 
Longfellow,      Henry      Wads- 
worth,   106 ;  his  democracy, 
47 ;    on    grief    and    poetry, 
40;  Michael  Angela,  25,  38, 
151,  '^73,  294;  on  the  poet's 
morals,   217,   229,  232,   soli- 
tude   48;     on     the    savage 
poet,     91 ;     on     inspiration, 
167,  202,  211 
Longinus,    129,    163,   322 
Lord,  William  W.,  72 
Low,  Benjamin  R.  C.,  164 
Lowell,  Amy,   196,  209,  302 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  50  ;  on 
Burns,    247 ;    on   the    poet's 
age    no,    divinity   24,   habi- 
tat 94,  inspiration   172,  203, 
211,     usefulness     303,     304, 
314,  318 
Lucan,  40,  286 
Lucretius,  279 

Lytton,  Bulwer,  on  Andre 
Chenier,  42;  on  the  female 
poet,  85;  on  Milton,  72, 
153,  154;  on  the  poet's  ap- 
pearance 73,  fame  23,  per- 
secution 41,  usefulness  304, 
314 

McDonald,  Carl,  314 

Mackaye,  Percy,  46,  84,  106, 
127,  128,  132,   138,  198 

Maclean,  L.  E.,  84 

"Macleod,  Fiona"  (see  Wil- 
liam Sharp) 

MacNiel,  J.  C,  106 

Mann,  Dorothea  Lawrence, 
184,    205 

Mansfield,   Richard,   288 

Map,  Walter,  286 

Markham,  Edwin,  lOl,  176, 
184,  227,  314,  321 


35B 


Index 


Marlowe,      Christopher,      23, 
65;    Alfred    Noyes   on,   61, 

140,  141,  241,  245;  Joseph- 
ine Preston  Peabody  on, 
61,  126,  143,  244,  277 

Marquis,  Don,   105 
Masefield,   John,  63,   266 
Massey,  Gerald,  314 
Masters,    Edgar    Lee,   31,   67, 

95,  96,  120 
Meres,  Francis,  346 
Meredith,  George,  30,  40,  "JT, 

i6s»  234,  314 
Meredith,     Owen,     133,     168, 

312 
Meynell,    Alice,    10,    84,    109, 

164,  167,  184,  204,  211 
Meynell,  Viola,  59,  140 
Middleton,  Richard,  105,  164, 

305 
Millay,  Edna  St.  Vincent,  105 
Miller,    Joaquin,    62,    99,    141, 

149,   164,  202,  217 
Mihon,  John,  23,   71,   ^2,  73, 

124,  187,  236,  258,  286 
Miriam,   84 
Mitchell,  L.  E.,   16 
Mitchell,  Stewart 
Mitford,  Mary  Russell,  226 
Montgomery,  James,  304 
Moody,  William  Vaughan,  58 
Moore,    Thomas,    37,   67,   85, 

118,  223,  288,  318 
Morley,  Christopher,  288 
Morris,      Lewis,      105,      211, 

314 
Morris,     William,     117,     233, 

299 
Myers,  Frederick  W.  H. 

Naden,  Constance,  264 
Nash,  Thomas,  246 
Neihardt,     John     Gneisenau, 

141,  286 
Nero,  25 

Nerval,  Gerard  de,  42 
Newbolt,    Henry,   31 
Newman,  Henry,  235 
Newton,   Sir  Isaac,   15 
Nicolson,  Violet,  49 


Nordau,  Max  Simon,  79,  214, 

228 
North,  Christopher,  4,  230 
Noyes,    Alfred,    50,    69,    140, 

147,   172,   177,   185,  211,  229 

O'Connor,    Norreys    Jephson, 

288 
Osborne,  James  Insley,  71 
O'Sheel,  Shaemus,  51,  305 
Otway,  Thomas,  97 

Pater,  Walter,  261,  262 

Patmore,  Coventry,  on  the 
poet's  expression  204,  in- 
difference to  fame  33,  love 
118,  146,  morals  240,  relig- 
ion  281,   usefulness   312 

Payne,  John,  35 

Peabody,  Josephine  Preston, 
24,  33,  50,  61,  loi,  126,  143, 
172,  241,  290 

Percival,  James  Gates,  33,  49, 
84,  91,  105,  106,  127,  164, 
174,  318 

Percy,  William  Alexander, 
42,  84,  127,  137 

Petrarch,   143,   145,  286 

Phidias,  8,   14,  282 

Phillips,  Stephen,  25,  84,  93, 
103,  104,  289 

Phillpotts,  Eden,  318 

Pierce,  C.  A.,  314 

Plato,  7,  56,  112,  152,  153, 
174,  268,  284,  293,  294,  297, 
298,  301,  313,  316,  317,  331, 
350,  351;  ^on,  163,  192; 
Phaedo,  123 ;  Philebus, 
342;  Phaedrns,  8,  130,  14.0, 
154,  183,  192 ;  Republic, 
213,  235,  257,  291,  330; 
Symposium,  135,  154,  156, 
157,  158,   159,  342 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  56,  76, 
162,   173,  207,  255,  264,  307 

Pollock,  Robert,  26 

Pope,  Alexander,  56,  64,  loi, 
196,  348 

Pound,  Ezra,  21,  27,  31,  32, 
78,   137,  221,  285 


Index 


359 


Praed,  Winthrop  Mackworth, 
26,   67,    100,    121,    164,   229, 
288 
Price,  C.  Augustus,  17 
Procter,  Adelaide  Anne,  84 
Procter,  Bryan   Cornwall,  84, 
85,  100,  286 

Rand,  Theodore  Harding,  98 

Raphael,   282 

Raymond,     George     Lansing, 

42,  142,  149,  232,  280,  288 
Reade,     Thomas      Buchanan, 

40,  47,  49 

Realf,    Richard,    40,    62,    150, 

211,  288 
Reno,   Lydia  M.,    17 
Rice,  Cale  Young,  26,  41,  84, 

127,   143,   151,  167,  193 
Rice,  Harvey,  24 
Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  40.  47 
Rittenhouse,  Jessie,  21,  288 
Rives,   Hallie  Erven,  59 
Robbins,   Reginald   Chauncey, 

41,  7^,  79.  30s 
Roberts,  Cecil,  105 
Roberts,       Charles       George 

Douglas,   165,   168 
Robinson,    Edwin    Arlington, 

26,  so,  99,   173 
Robinson,  Mary,  290 
Rossetti,     Christina,     84,     94, 

135,   147,  268,  281 
Rossetti,    Dante    Gabriel,    32, 

79,  280;  on  Chatterton,  24, 

42,  66;  on  Dante,  42,  82; 
on  Marston,  T2\  on  the 
poet's  age  109,  expression 
208,  inspiration  165,  love 
134,  135.  141,  152,  morals 
253,  usefulness  304 

Rousseau,    Jean    Jacques    22, 

103,  218,  348 
Ruskin,  John,   253 
Russell,  George  William,  149, 

257,  295 
Ryan,  Abram  J.,  49,  232 

Sampson,  Henry  Aylett,   loi 
Sandburg,  Carl,  95,  267 


Sappho,  56,  64;  Alcaeus  on, 
65 ;  modern  poets  on  her 
genius  84,  198,  on  her  pas- 
sion 127,  128,  129,  130,  131, 
132,  137,  138 

Savage,  John,  99 

Saxe,  John  Godfrey,  63,  loi, 

231 
Scala,   George   Augustus,   221 
Schauffler,      Robert      Haven, 

164,  211 
Schiller,      Johann      Christoff 

Friedrich,   166 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,   18,  28,  96, 

106,     108,     164,     202,     312, 

318 

Seeger,  Alan.  27,  67,  95,  96, 
103,   109,  286,  288 

Service,   Robert,   298 

Shairp,  Principal,  69 

Shakespeare,  William,  4,  23, 
26,  41,  64,  65,  99.  109,  116, 
134.   195.  259,  287,  308 

Sharp,   William,  87,    167 

Shelley,     Percy     Bysshe,     10, 
335.  338,  348,  349.  and  By- 
ron 43,   52,   66,   11,   79,   80, 
82,    183 ;    on    female    poets, 
88;     his     hostility     to     the 
public,  29,  92;  his  indiffer- 
ence   to    his    body,    76;    on 
Keats,    43 ;    on    the    poet's 
early    death    81,    103,    habi- 
tat, 90,  91,  inspiration    178, 
179,  180,  181,   189,  190,   191, 
202,  255,  305,  love  135.  146, 
157.   158.   159,   160,  madness 
196,    loneliness    36,    50,    52, 
morals    237,    239,    242,    243, 
256,  persecutions  40,  42,  44, 
poverty    100,    religion    263, 
268,  274,  seership  312,  use- 
fulness   292,    303,    304,    309. 
314,   318;    on   prenatal   life, 
183;   on  Tasso,  42 
Shenstone,  William,  99 
Sidney,     Sir     Philip,    2,     163, 

212,  292,  295,  346 
Sinclair,   May,    142 
Smart,  Christopher,  195 


36o 


Index 


Smith,  Alexander,  49,  69,  81, 
98,  104,  122,  149,  150,  151, 
175,   181,  211,   297 

Smith,   J.    Thome,   jr.,    105 

Socrates,  112,  291 

Solomon,  116 

Scran,  Charles,  43 

Southey,  Robert,  42,  45,  51, 
84,  90,  127,  230,  273,  317 

Spenser,  Edmund,  64,  70,  97, 
125 

Sprague,  E.  L.,  25 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence, 
45.  47,  97,  106,  167,  288 

Stephens,   James,   22,   31,    164 

Stickney,  Trumbull,  211 

Stoddard,  Charles  Warren, 
49,  106,  286 

Sullivan,  Sir  Arthur,  38 

Swinburne,  Algernon,  106, 
121,  348;  chafing  against 
moral  restraints,  212,  221, 
222,  250;  on  Victor  Hugo, 
42,  45,  312,  314,  318;  on 
Marston,  72;  on  his 
mother,  58 ;  on  the  poet's 
age  106,  love  of  liberty  319, 
morals  220,  227,  parentage 
57,  religion  269,  271,  275, 
usefulness  296;  on  Chris- 
tina Rossetti,  84,  164;  on 
Sappho,  84,  85,  127,  128, 
130,  131,  138;  on  Shelley, 
64 

Symons,  Arthur,  120,  172, 
224,  262,  264 

Taine,  Hippolyte  Adolph,   12, 

337 
Tannahill,  John,   195 
Tasso,    Torquato,    23,  42,   56, 

195 
Taylor,  Bayard,  18,  105,  107, 
121,     146,     186,     202,     305, 

314 

Teasdale,  Sara,  49,  59,  96, 
116,  117,  126,  127,  130,  138, 
140 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  106;  bur- 
lesque    on     inspiration     in 


wine,  173;  his  contempt  for 
the  public,  30;  on  the  poet's 
death  81,  expression  22, 
204,  208,  inspiration  201, 
intuitions  197,  love  of  lib- 
erty 319,  324,  lovelessness 
51,  52,  114,  morality  226, 
231,  237,  pantheism  267, 
268,  persecution  40,  216, 
rank  61,  religion  276,  279, 
superiority  to  art  26,  use- 
fulness 93,  318 

Tertullian,  200 

Thomas,  Edith,   117 

Thompson,  Francis,  95 ;  con- 
fidence in  immortality,  20; 
humility,  18;  on  inspira- 
tion 164,  165,  195,  210,  211; 
on  love  and  poetry  147, 
151;  on  Alice  Meynell,  84; 
on  Viola  Meynell,  59;  on 
the  poet's  body  69,  82,  ex- 
pression 204,  grief  44, 
habitat  95,  loneliness  53, 
morals  242,  227,  youth  104, 
105 

Thomson,  James,  37,  75,  89, 
90,   188 

Thomson,  James  (B.  V.), 
293 ;  his  atheism,  265 ;  on 
Mrs.  Browning,  84;  on  in- 
spiration, 164;  on  pessimis- 
tic poetry,  298 ;  on  Platonic 
love,  125,  152 ;  on  Shelley, 
44,  45,  244,  314;  on  Tasso, 
42,    193;    on    WeltschmerZj 

Timrod,    Henry,    16,    17,    40, 

69,   183,  238,  286 
Tolstoi,   Count  Leo,  214,  306 
Towne,  Charles  Hanson,  95 
Trench,  Herbert,  312 
Tupper,      Martin     Farquhar, 

105,  221,  234 

Van  Dyke,  Henry,  63,  318 
Vergil,   161 

Verlaine,  Paul  Marie,  12,  227 
Villon,  Frangois,  56,  220,  227 
Viviani,   Emilia,  86 


Index 


361 


Waddington,   Samuel,  35 
Ware,  Eugene,  290 
Watts-Dunton,  Theodore,  31, 

33,  40,  50,  72,  172,  238 
Wesley,  Charles,  235 
West,    James    Harcourt,    163, 

314 

W  heelock,  John  Hall,  24, 
105,  205 

White,  Kirke,  37,  81,  141 

Whitman,  Walt,  20,  68,  106, 
141,  341 ;  confidence  in  im- 
mortality, 21,  22;  democ- 
racy, 25,  46 ;  on  expression 
22,  204;  on  the  poet's  idle- 
ness 286,  inspiration  162, 
morals  250,  normality  39, 
76,  77,  protean  nature  9, 
love  150,  reconciling  of 
man  and  nature  338;  on 
the  poet-warrior,  288;  his 
zest,  106 

Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  18, 
49,  62,  63,  129,  216,  232,  314 

Wilde,  Oscar,  on  Byron,  45; 
on  Dante,  42,  45,  82,  288; 
on  Keats,  43,  45 ;  on  love 
and  art,  115,  116,  133;  his 
morals,  212,  224,  308;  on 
the  poet's  prophecy,  311; 
on  the  uselessness  of  art, 
290 


W^iley,  Sara  King,  42,   142 

Winter,   William,  201 

Woodberry,  George  Edward, 
125;  apology,  21,  211  ;  on 
friendship,  52;  on  the 
poet's  love,  123,  152,  154, 
155;  on  inspiration,  193; 
on  Shelley,  44 

Wordsworth,  William,  4,  71, 
72,  336,  338,  341.  350;  con- 
fidence in  immortality,  21  ; 
on  female  poets,  86 ;  his 
friendship  with  Coleridge, 
51  ;  on  James  Hogg,  69;  on 
inspiration,  121,  179,  182, 
190,  197,  286;  Keats'  annoy- 
ance with  Wordsworth,  5 ; 
on  love  poetry,  120,  146; 
on  the  peasant  poet,  62,  90; 
on  the  poet's  democracy 
319,  habitat  92,  94,  morals 
237,  252,  religion  268,  soli- 
tude 47  ;  the  Prelude  58,  77  ; 
on  prenatal  life,  103,  183; 
quarrel  with  philosophy, 
307 ;  repudiation  of  inspi- 
ration  through   wine,   173 

Wright,   Harold   Bell,  78 

Yeats,     William     Butler,     20, 

46,  94 
Young,  Edmund,  33,   198 


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